Mental And Physical Exercise Delays Dementia In Fatal Genetic Disease

Another example of the interaction between nature and nurture.
Huntington's disease is what killed Woodie Guthrie.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080124092540.htm

ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2008) — Scientists at Melbourne's Howard Florey Institute have discovered that mental and physical stimulation delays the onset of dementia in the fatal genetic disease, Huntington's disease.

Personality can’t predict breast cancer

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22902743/

updated 28 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The idea that a woman's personality traits can make her more prone to breast cancer appears nothing more than a myth, according to a Dutch study.

Women who were unemotional, depressed or anxious were no more or less likely to get breast cancer than any other women, the study found. Nor were women who were optimistic, angry or understanding, or had any combination of personality traits.

Environmental pollution and diabetes may be linked

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/press/dpp/2008012501

In the most recent edition of the Lancet, Drs. Oliver Jones and Julian Griffin highlight the need to research the possible link between persistent organic pollutants (POPs, a group which includes many pesticides) and insulin resistance, which can lead to adult onset diabetes.

In their commentary, Dr Jones and Dr. Griffin cite peer reviewed research including that of Dr D Lee, et al, which demonstrated a very strong relationship between the levels of POPs in blood, particularly organochlorine compounds, and the risk of type 2 diabetes.


Environmental pollution and diabetes may be linked
25 January 2008

Scientists call for more research into neglected area


Cambridge scientists are advocating additional research into the little understood links between environmental pollution and type 2 diabetes.

In the most recent edition of the Lancet, Drs. Oliver Jones and Julian Griffin highlight the need to research the possible link between persistent organic pollutants (POPs, a group which includes many pesticides) and insulin resistance, which can lead to adult onset diabetes.

In their commentary, Dr Jones and Dr. Griffin cite peer reviewed research including that of Dr D Lee, et al, which demonstrated a very strong relationship between the levels of POPs in blood, particularly organochlorine compounds, and the risk of type 2 diabetes.

“Of course correlation does not automatically imply causation,” says Dr. Jones. “But if there is indeed a link, the health implications could be tremendous. At present there is very limited information. Research into adult onset diabetes currently focuses on genetics and obesity; there has been almost no consideration for the possible influence of environmental factors such as pollution.”

Interestingly, in the Lee study an association between obesity and diabetes was absent in people with low concentrations of POPs in their blood. In other words, individuals were more at risk of diabetes if they were thin with high levels of POPs in their blood than if they were overweight but with low levels of POPs.

The Oneness of Being

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, and in sympathy for the Haitian earthquake victims.

The Oneness of Bein
copyright Patricia M. Shannon 1992

The Earth is our mother, and the sun is our father,
They nourish us and sustain us.
Though I stand on a mountaintop alone.
I am not alone, for I am one with all.

The oneness is a blessing, a constant source of strength;
the loneliness of being will rend your heart no more.
But in this world imperfect, it also is a curse,
I feel the pain of others as if it were my own.

Let us work together, and join our hearts as one,
to make a world where children no longer die from guns.
Throw away your hatreds, your wars and your drugs;
the highest high you'll ever know is when you feel as one.

Eat Your Leafy Vegetables To Decrease Your Risk Of Cataracts

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080114162513.htm

ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2008) — Women who have higher dietary intake of lutein and zeaxanthin--compounds found in yellow or dark, leafy vegetables--as well as more vitamin E from food and supplements appear to have a lower risk for developing cataracts, according to a new article.

Calcium Supplements May Increase Heart Attacks In Older Women

Another darned if you do, darned if you don't problem, since osteoporosis can cause a broken hip, which often leads to premature death.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080116193102.htm

ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2008) — New research suggests that calcium supplements may increase the risk of heart attack in healthy postmenopausal women.

2007 Was Tied As Earth's Second Warmest Year

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080116114150.htm


ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2008) — Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth's second warmest year in a century.

Reversal Of Alzheimer's Symptoms Within Minutes In Human Study

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109091102.htm

ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — An extraordinary new scientific study, which for the first time documents marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of administration of a therapeutic molecule, has just been published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

Designs for the poor

Very inspiring. A good thing to read when you're feeling repulsed by being a human being.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/biztech/12/20/digital.design/index.html

updated 9:12 a.m. EST, Thu December 20, 2007
By Steve Mollman, CNN

But for an increasing number of designers, the stakes are even higher elsewhere: global poverty.

Imagine taking the industrial design smarts behind the iPod and applying it to the far more basic technology needs of the extremely poor. In the past, few top designers would have bothered. But that's changing.

At MIT, Stanford, and other universities, young design and engineering talents are eagerly enrolling in courses that teach them how to meet the technology needs of the developing world. Stanford offers a course called "Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability." One of the teachers, David Kelley, is the founder of IDEO, the industrial design firm behind such tech classics as the Palm V PDA and the first production mouse for the Lisa and Macintosh computers from Apple.

Amy B. Smith, an inventor who lectures at MIT, said her course on design for the developing world gets about a hundred applicants, but she can only take 30.

Cat Fleas' Journey Into The Vacuum Is A 'One-way Trip'

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071217111010.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2007) — Homeowners dogged by household fleas need look no farther than the broom closet to solve their problem. Scientists have determined that vacuuming kills fleas in all stages of their lives, with an average of 96 percent success in adult fleas and 100 percent destruction of younger fleas.

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/IG132

There are over 2,000 described species of fleas in the world. The most common domestic flea is the cat flea (Ctenocephalides felis felis). The dog flea (Ctenocephalides canis) appears similar to the cat flea, but is rare in the United States. The sticktight flea (Echidnophaga gallinacea) can become a problem if pets frequent areas associated with poultry.

Girl born with 8 limbs goes home after surgery

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22274113/

updated 11:11 p.m. ET, Sat., Dec. 15, 2007
BANGALORE, India - A 2-year-old girl who was born with four arms and four legs left a hospital in southern India on Saturday little more than a month after surgeons there successfully removed her extra limbs.

The surgeon who led more than 30 doctors in the marathon surgery said Lakshmi was making good progress and should be mobile soon.

"Lakshmi is fine and stable," chief surgeon Dr. Sharan Patil told The Associated Press. "She should face no problem in walking."

U.S. childhood cancer death rate drops sharply

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22132674/

updated 1:48 p.m. ET, Thurs., Dec. 6, 2007
WASHINGTON - The cancer death rate for children in the United States has declined sharply — down 20 percent from 1990 to 2004 — thanks to better treatment of leukemia and other cancers, health officials said on Thursday.

Cancer stands as the leading disease-related cause of death for U.S. children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report. Better treatments are improving survival rates, the CDC said.

Top 11 Warmest Years On Record Have All Been In Last 13 Years

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213101419.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2007) — The decade of 1998-2007 is the warmest on record, according to data sources obtained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The global mean surface temperature for 2007 is currently estimated at 0.41°C/0.74°F above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.20°F.
...
The provisional global figure for 2007 using data from January to November, currently places the year as the seventh warmest on records dating back to 1850.

Other remarkable global climatic events recorded so far in 2007 include record-low Arctic sea ice extent, which led to first recorded opening of the Canadian Northwest Passage; the relatively small Antarctic Ozone Hole; development of La Niña in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific; and devastating floods, drought and storms in many places around the world.

Relatives

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214094129.htm

the dog diverged from our ancient common ancestor earlier than the mouse

So we're more closely related to mice than to dogs.

Giving a squirrel a personality test

It takes all kinds, even for squirrles.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203204150.htm

Mom's Personality Means Survival For Her Squirrel Pups
ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2007) — A recent study indicates that mother squirrels have personalities, and they are essential for the growth rate and survival of her pups.

Researchers at the Kluane Red Squirrel Project found that red squirrels have a range of personalities, from exploratory and aggressive to careful and passive. Both kinds of squirrels persist in the population because neither personality type offers an exclusive advantage for survival.
...
In years with abundant food, McAdam said, more active squirrels use their extra energy to their advantage and the pups grow faster. When food is sparse, their high-energy lifestyle is costly and the offspring of passive squirrel mothers have the advantage.

“There is a range of personalities in squirrels because the personality that is better for fitness depends on the year,” McAdam said.

Mother squirrel personalities also affected pup survival rates. Pups from aggressive mothers had lower survival rates when they were in their mother’s nest, but it wasn’t clear if it was a result of maternal style or other environmental effects. Once they left the nest, they had better survival rates through the first winter. McAdam said it’s likely that this is because they are better at competing for territories than other pups.

Pre-natal alcohol exposure shapes sensory preference, upping odds of later alcohol use and abuse

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/apa-pae120707.php

Public release date: 12-Dec-2007
Contact: Pam Willenz
public.affairs@apa.org
202-336-5707
American Psychological Association

Pre-natal alcohol exposure shapes sensory preference, upping odds of later alcohol use and abuse
2 studies help explain why teens exposed to fetal alcohol are at high risk for heavy drinking and perpetuating a family cycle of alcohol addiction
WASHINGTON – Young people whose mothers drank when pregnant may be more likely to abuse alcohol because, in the womb, their developing senses came to prefer its taste and smell. Researchers with the State University of New York Developmental Ethanol Research Center have found that because the developing nervous system adapts to whatever mothers eat and drink, young rats exposed to alcohol (ethanol) in the womb drank significantly more alcohol than non-exposed rats.

These findings, covered in two related studies, appear in the December issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The studies contribute a critical biological piece to the complex puzzle of why teens with a family history of drinking may themselves drink more. Lead author Steven Youngentob, PhD, observes that a biologically instilled preference for alcohol’s taste and smell can make young people much more likely to abuse alcohol, especially in light of social pressures, risk-taking tendencies and alcohol’s addicting qualities.

These more subtle consequences of fetal alcohol exposure come on top of the potential for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which leads to profound neurodevelopmental problems including mental retardation.

Shooting ourselves in the foot

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uom-nss121307.php

Public release date: 13-Dec-2007
Contact: Christian Basi
BasiC@missouri.edu
573-882-4430
University of Missouri-Columbia

New study suggests why vaccines directed against cancer, HIV don't work
Mizzou, Imperial College London researchers found that chemical markers prevalent on cancer and HIV-infected cells can fool the body and make immune cells and antibodies leave them untouched
COLUMBIA, Mo. ¬— Researchers from the University of Missouri and Imperial College London have found evidence suggesting why vaccines directed against the virus that causes AIDS and many cancers do not work. This research is being published in the Dec. 14 edition of The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

In research spanning more than a decade, Gary Clark, associate professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health in the MU School of Medicine, and Anne Dell, an investigator at Imperial College London, found that HIV, aggressive cancer cells, H. pylori, and parasitic worms known as schistosomes carry the same carbohydrate sequences as many proteins produced in human sperm.

“It’s our major Achilles heel,” Clark said. “Reproduction is required for the survival of our species. Therefore we are ‘hard-wired’ to protect our sperm and eggs as well as our unborn babies from any type of immune response. Unfortunately, our results suggest that many pathogens and tumor cells also have integrated themselves into this protective system, thus enabling them to resist the human immune response.”

Antibacterial Chemical Disrupts Hormone Activities

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071207150713.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2007) — A new UC Davis study shows that a common antibacterial chemical added to bath soaps can alter hormonal activity in rats and in human cells in the laboratory--and does so by a previously unreported mechanism.


The findings come as an increasing number of studies -- of both lab animals and humans -- are revealing that some synthetic chemicals in household products can cause health problems by interfering with normal hormone action.

Called endocrine disruptors, or endocrine disrupting substances (EDS), such chemicals have been linked in animal studies to a variety of problems, including cancer, reproductive failure and developmental anomalies.

That's on top of the problem of anti-bacterial soap encouraging the spread of resistant bacteria.

Smaller babies more prone to depression, anxiety later on

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uoa-sbm120407.php

Turns out there might be some truth to the popular wisdom that plump babies are happy babies. A landmark public health study has found that people who had a low birth weight are more likely to experience depression and anxiety later in life.

“We found that even people who had just mild or moderate symptoms of depression or anxiety over their life course were smaller babies than those who had better mental health,” said lead author Ian Colman of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health. “It suggests a dose-response relationship. As birth weight progressively decreases, it’s more likely that an individual will suffer from mood disorders later in life.”

The study, published in the December 2007 issue of Biological Psychiatry, analyzes information drawn from the Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, one of the longest-running cohort studies in the world. The survey tracked more than 4,600 people born in Great Britain in 1946 for symptoms of anxiety and depression over a 40-year period.
...
The researchers emphasize they are not saying all small babies will experience poor mental health in the future. They also say this study is not about babies born full-term versus babies born premature, since the data collected back in 1946 made no mention of gestational age at birth.

“Being born small isn’t necessarily a problem. It is a problem if you were born small because of adverse conditions in the womb—and low birth weight is what we looked at in this study because it is considered a marker of stress in the womb. When a mother is really stressed, blood flow to the uterus is restricted and the fetus gets fewer nutrients, which tends to lead to lower birth weight,” explained Colman.

At the same time, because the mother is stressed, stress hormones are passing through the placenta to the fetus and may affect the fetus’s neurodevelopment and stress response. “Under these conditions, the part of the child’s brain that deals with stress could be programmed incorrectly in utero—the brain doesn’t develop as it would under ideal circumstances. If this theory is correct, you would find that when stressful events occur, the people who were smaller babies would be more likely to become depressed or anxious,” said Colman.

The hypothesized causes for the correlation are reasonable, and I expect are at least partly responsible. A factor not mentioned is that small babies are more likely to be born to poor mothers. Being poor can make a person more depressed and anxious.

'tween a rock and a hard place

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22099761/

Calcium level may signal risk of mental decline
Those with higher amounts have more cognitive problems, study says

updated 1:49 p.m. ET, Tues., Dec. 4, 2007
NEW YORK - In elderly people, higher levels of calcium in the blood are associated with poorer mental function and faster decline in cognitive ability, Dutch researchers have shown.

Some diseases that increase blood calcium — such as kidney failure, cancer and excessive parathyroid gland activity — could be a factor in the relationship, although it’s also possible that an individual’s calcium “set point” plays a role in cognitive decline with age, note Dr. Miranda D. Schram and colleagues in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Several studies have shown that small but long-term elevations of calcium within nerves and brain cells can kill them, Schram of Leiden University Medical Center and her team point out. Calcium can pass from the blood stream into the brain, they add, but it has not been clear whether blood calcium levels have any relationship to cognitive function.

I take extra calcium/magnesium/D3 because I am a small Caucasian female of a certain age, at risk for osteoporosis. My mother broke her hip and had to have it replaced. Fortunately for my risk factors, I'm not a smoker, which is associated with a higer risk of osteoporosis. Since extra calcium increases the need for magnesium and zinc, both of which I take, perhaps that will lessen the chance of a bad effect on cognitive ability. I sure hope so!