Why do men prefer nice women? Responsiveness and desire

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People’s emotional reactions and desires in initial romantic encounters determine the fate of a potential relationship. Responsiveness may be one of those initial “sparks” necessary to fuel sexual desire and land a second date. However, it may not be a desirable trait for both men and women on a first date. Does responsiveness increase sexual desire in the other person? Do men perceive responsive women as more attractive, and does the same hold true for women’s perceptions of men? A study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin seeks to answer those questions.Femininity and AttractivenessResearchers from the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, the University of Rochester, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, collaborated on three studies to observe people’s perceptions of responsiveness. People often say that they seek a partner that is “responsive to their needs,” and that such a partner would arouse their sexual interest. A responsive person is one that is supportive of another’s needs and goals. “Sexual desire thrives on rising intimacy and being responsive is one of the best ways to instill this elusive sensation over time,” lead researcher Gurit Birnbaum explains. “Our findings show that this does not necessarily hold true in an initial encounter, because a responsive potential partner may convey opposite meanings to different people.”In the first study, the researchers examined whether responsiveness is perceived as feminine or masculine, and whether men or women perceived a responsive person of the opposite sex as sexually desirable. …


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#Alternative-Medicine, #Alzheimer, #King, #People, #Person, #Psychology, #Responsiveness, #Science, #Sexual, #University, #Virtual, #Women

Day 8 on Chemo regime Alimta/Carboplatin and Trial by local Council NSW to end illegal dumping

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Day 8 of chemotherapy should see me starting to feel better. Yesterday was the day of feeling like death warmed up! Back ache, bile and metalic taste, nausea, anxiousness, fatigue and unable to sleep longer than a couple of hours at a time. Today after taking medication to fend off most of the above symptoms I am hoping to come good and enjoy the sunshine that has appeared outside! Expected temperature will be 16 degrees celcius and sunny – a perfect Winter day!Monday brought a wonderful surprise for me – my daughter Jo invited me to a high tea at the beautiful Windsor Hotel, Melbourne. I caught the bus that has replaced all trains for 2 weeks while school holidays are on and so that VLine can work on the rail …


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#Asbestos, #Daughter, #King, #Liverpool, #Nsw, #People, #Sydney, #Winter

Alternative to surgery for Graves" eye disease: Low-carb, gluten-free diet may help

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Don Parker was facing a second surgery to treat the bulging eyes and double vision he was experiencing due to Graves’ eye disease.But then ophthalmologist James McDonnell, MD, of Loyola University Medical Center recommended an alternative therapy that did not involve surgery or medication.McDonnell told Parker to change his diet, lose weight and take a nutraceutical (natural food product) that’s designed to restore proper immune and digestive function.Parker followed McDonnell’s regimen. He lost more than 35 pounds by giving up soda pop and eating a low-carb, gluten-free diet with lots of vegetables. Each day, he takes 12 capsules of the nutraceutical.“My double vision is almost gone and there is so little bulging in my eyes that they look almost completely normal,” he said.Graves’ eye disease, also known as Graves’ ophthalmopathy, is present in about half of people who have Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disorder. In Graves’ eye disease, the immune system attacks muscles and other tissues around the eye. This can cause the eyes to bulge out and become misaligned.Bulging eyes can be treated with orbital decompression surgery. The surgeon removes bone and/or fat from behind the eye, allowing the eye to move back into its socket. Double vision can be treated with a different surgery, which straightens the eyes by adjusting the eye muscles.When Parker came to see McDonnell, he already had undergone one orbital decompression, and was facing a possible second surgery for his double vision. But rather than recommending surgery, McDonnell suggested a holistic approach.“Once you clear up and balance your body, a whole raft of problems can go away,” McDonnell said.Parker said his doctor’s appointment with McDonnell served as a wake-up call. “I was at a crossroads in my life,” Parker said. “I would have to either change my ways or die. …


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#Cancer, #Graves, #Health, #Loyola, #Parker, #People, #Pregnancy, #Surgeon

Meals For The Simple Lifestyles

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As much as I like eating healthy when I can, one of the confessions that I am ashamed about is that I am not a strong cook. Generally, my skills in the kitchen can only go so far, which means that I am not going to host any dinner parties anytime soon. This doesn’t mean that I cannot create s...

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#Food, #Health, #Nutrition, #People

Schizophrenics at greater risk of getting diseases

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Researchers have long known that people with autoimmune diseases, such as hepatitis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and psoriasis, are at greater risk of developing schizophrenia.But new research based on data sets covering the majority of the Danish population shows that the development goes both ways: People suffering from schizophrenia also have an increased risk of contracting autoimmune diseases, especially if they have suffered from a severe infection.Head of the new study is Michael Eriksen Benrs, MD and PhD, who is senior researcher at the National Centre for Register-Based Research at Aarhus University and the Psychiatric Centre Copenhagen. He has done the study in collaboration with researchers from Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen as well as Johns Hopkins University in the USA.This month the results will be published in an article in the American journal The American Journal of Psychiatry.Three times higher riskDrawing on data from the Danish Civil Registration, Danish hospitals and the nation-wide Danish Psychiatric Central Research Register, the researchers behind the project have had the unique opportunity to examine an extraordinarily large group of people consisting of 3.83 million Danes. The registry data showed that from 1987 to 2010 39,364 people were diagnosed with schizophrenia, while 142,328 people were diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.By linking the data sets, the researchers found that a person suffering from schizophrenia has a 53 per cent higher risk of contracting an autoimmune disease compared to people who are not suffering from schizophrenia. Moreover, if you have schizophrenia and have been hospitalised or received treatment for a severe infection, you have a 2.7 times higher risk of getting an autoimmune disease.According to Michael E. Benrs, this is very useful knowledge for psychiatrists working with schizophrenics:”Six per cent of the schizophrenic patients have an autoimmune disease that requires treatment in a hospital. But the actual occurrence is significantly higher, seeing as our study does not incorporate all the people who are being treated by general physicians or have not been diagnosed yet. This means that psychiatrists should be on the lookout for signs of physical illness among their patients with schizophrenia, including autoimmune diseases,” explains Michael E. Benrs.Infections play a determining roleWith the aid of these large data sets, the researchers have been able to show certain correlations with great statistical certainty, but the study does not provide a definitive explanation for why schizophrenics have such an increased risk of contracting these diseases.According to Michael E. Benrs, a lot seems to suggest that infections are a determining factor.”It could be that people with schizophrenia er genetically vulnerable to infections, which increases the risk of getting schizophrenia but also autoimmune diseases,” he says and proceeds to explain that the human immune system can react to an infection by producing antibodies that do not merely react to the infection; the antibodies also start breaking down the body’s own tissue. This is how autoimmune diseases develop.Another possible explanation could be that neuropsychiatric symptoms diagnosed as schizophrenia are the first signs that an autoimmune disease has developed but has not yet been detected.Other explanations are related to lifestyle and genetics. …


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#Aarhus, #Aarhusuniversity, #Alzheimer, #American, #Civil, #Health, #Journal, #National, #People, #Psychiatric, #Science, #University

Optimizing custody is child"s play for physicists

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Ensuring that parents in recomposed families see their children regularly is a complex network problem.Physics can provide insights into societal trends. Problems involving interactions between people linked in real-life networks can be better understood by using physical models. As a diversion from his normal duties as a theoretical physicist, Andrs Gomberoff from the Andres Bello University in Santiago, Chile, set out to resolve one of his real-life problems: finding a suitable weekend for both partners in his recomposed family to see all their children at the same time. He then joined forces with a mathematician and a complex systems expert. This resulted in a study published in EPJ B, showing that solving this problem essentially equates to minimizing the energy in a material model.The authors assume that they deal with a network of people who are connected, either because they are in a current relationship or because they are ex-partners. Another assumption is that all involved in the network are willing to cooperate and communicate in an open manner.They then attempt to verify whether it is possible to find a custody arrangement whereby all parents see all of their children together every other weekend, thus satisfying the expectations of all members of the network. The answer is that it is not possible, in general, to have such an agreement.However, they also found that it is possible to have an arrangement in which one of the parents gets to see all of their children every other weekend. They also found an algorithm to maximize the level of contentment of members of this extended family network. Maximizing the number of parents spending time with their own children and those of their current partners was akin to minimizing the energy of a particular magnetic material called a spin glass.Who said that physics can’t have real-life applications?Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by Springer Science+Business Media. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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#Alternative-Medicine, #Business, #Chile, #Drs, #Energy, #Maximizing, #People, #Real, #Science, #Springer

Reducing Hep C infections for injection drug users

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Despite a number of social/behavioral intervention and educational programs, the spread of hepatitis C (HCV) in people who inject drugs (PWIDs) remains a chronic problem. Now, researchers affiliated with New York University’s Center for Drug Use and HIV Research (CDUHR) are focusing on intervention strategies that highlight the lesser-known dangers of HCV transmission through the sharing of other injection equipment such as cookers, filters, drug-dilution water and water containers.Their article, “The Staying Safe Intervention: Training People Who Inject Drugs in Strategies to Avoid Injection-Related HCV and HIV Infection,” published in AIDS Education and Prevention, Vol. 26:2, April 15, 2014, explores the feasibility and efficacy of their “Staying Safe Intervention,” a strengths-based social/behavioral intervention conducted with small groups of PWID, designed to facilitate long-term prevention of HIV and HCV.”The Staying Safe Intervention seeks to reduce injection risk by intervening upstream in the causal chain of risk behaviors by modeling, training in, and motivating the use of strategies and practices of long-term risk-avoidance,” said Dr. Pedro Mateu-Gelabert, the study’s Principal Investigator, at the NYC-based National Development Research Institutes.Dr. Mateu-Gelabert and his NDRI-CDUHR team evaluated 68 street-recruited injectors from the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The objective was to reduce participants’ injection risk behaviors, empower and motivate behavioral change, and teach tactics to help reduce drug intake. The current program was built upon findings of their 2005 study, “Staying Safe,” which looked at the behaviors and strategies of individuals who had injected drugs for long periods of time (8-15 years) but had not contracted HIV or HCV.”The Staying Safe Intervention does not focus exclusively on the moment of injection,” explains Dr. Mateu-Gelabert, “but on the upstream determinants of risk behavior, such as stigma, risk networks, social support and income, while encouraging injectors to plan ahead in order to better manage the drug-related risk contexts they are likely to face.”The social/behavioral intervention showed substantial improvement in motivation and planning to avoid injection-related risks, increased use of stigma management strategies, and decreases in drug withdrawal episodes (known to reduce safe injection practices) and number of weekly injections. The research team also noted that participants in the study have been spreading the word on safer drug use within their communities.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that not only do nine percent of new HIV infections originate from drug use, but 18 percent of PWID are HIV positive and up to 70-77 percent of PWIDs have HCV.”Given the substantial reductions observed among Staying Safe participants in key injection-related risk behaviors associated with HCV transmission, the Staying Safe Intervention may have the potential to contribute to sufficient additional risk reduction to help address the seemingly intractable rates of HCV transmission among PWID,” said Dr. Mateu-Gelabert.Currently, Dr. …


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#Cancer, #Education, #Groups, #Health, #Intervention, #People, #Pregnancy, #Research, #Staying, #University

Discovery may help to explain mystery of "missing" genetic risk, susceptibility to common diseases

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A new study could help to answer an important riddle in our understanding of genetics: why research to look for the genetic causes of common diseases has failed to explain more than a fraction of the heritable risk of developing them.Susceptibility to common diseases is believed to arise through a combination of many common genetic variants that individually slightly increase the risk of disease, plus a smaller number of rare mutations that often carry far greater risk.However, even when their effects are added together, the genetic variants so far linked to common diseases account for only a relatively small proportion of the risk we know is conveyed by genetics through studies of family history.But the major new study, published in the journal PLOS Genetics, shows for the first time in cancer that some common genetic variants could actually be indicators of the presence of much more influential rare mutations that have yet to be found.Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, led an international consortium made up of more than 25 leading academic institutions on the study, which was funded by the European Union.The research, involving 20,440 men with prostate cancer and 21,469 without the disease, identified a cluster of four common genetic variants on chromosome 17 that appeared to give rise to a small increase in prostate cancer risk, using the standard statistical techniques for this type of study.But the study found an alternative explanation for the risk signal — a small proportion of the men with these common variants were in fact carriers of a rare mutation in the nearby HOXB13 gene, which is known to be linked to prostate cancer. Under this ‘synthetic association’, the number of people carrying a cancer risk variant was much lower than had been assumed, but those people who did inherit a variant had a much higher risk of prostate cancer than had been realised.The discovery shows that the prevailing genetic theory — that common cancers are predominantly caused by the combined action of many common genetic variants, each with only a very small effect — could potentially underestimate the impact of rare, as yet undiscovered mutations.The results are important because they show that there is a need for renewed effort by geneticists to find the causal variants, whether common or rare, behind the many common cancer-associated variants identified in recent years.Identifying any underlying rare mutations with a big effect on disease risk could improve the genetic screening and clinical management of individuals at greater risk of developing cancer, as well as other diseases.Study co-leader Dr Zsofia Kote-Jarai, Senior Staff Scientist at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), said: “As far as we are aware, this is the first known example of a ‘synthetic association’ in cancer genetics. It was exciting to find evidence for this theory, which predicts that common genetic variants that appear to increase risk of disease by only a modest amount may indeed sometimes be detected purely due to their correlation with a rarer variant which confers a greater risk.”Our study does not imply how widespread this phenomenon may be, but it holds some important lessons for geneticists in cancer, and other common diseases. It demonstrates the importance of identifying the causal genetic changes behind the many common variants that have already been shown to influence risk of disease.”Our study also demonstrates that standard methods to identify potential causal variants when fine-mapping genetic associations with disease may be inadequate to assess the contribution of rare variants. Large sequencing studies may be necessary to answer these questions unequivocally.”Study co-leader Professor Ros Eeles, Professor of Oncogenetics at The Institute of Cancer Research and Honorary Clinical Consultant at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said: “One important unanswered question in cancer genetics — and in genetics of common disease more generally — is why the genetic mutations we’ve discovered so far each seem to have such a small effect, when studies of families have shown that our genetic make-up has a very large influence on our risk of cancer.”Our study is an important step forward in our understanding of where we might find this ‘missing’ genetic risk in cancer. At least in part, it might lie in rarer mutations which current research tools have struggled to find, because individually each does not affect a large number of people.”


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#Cancer, #Common, #Count, #Discovery, #Disease, #Genetic, #London, #Major, #People, #Professor, #Research, #Standard

New blood cells fight brain inflammation

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Hyperactivity of our immune system can cause a state of chronic inflammation. If chronic, the inflammation will affect our body and result in disease. In the devastating disease multiple sclerosis, hyperactivity of immune cells called T-cells induce chronic inflammation and degeneration of the brain. Researchers at BRIC, the University of Copenhagen, have identified a new type of regulatory blood cells that can combat such hyperactive T-cells in blood from patients with multiple sclerosis. By stimulating the regulatory blood cells, the researchers significantly decreased the level of brain inflammation and disease in a biological model. The results are published in the journal Nature Medicine.Molecule activate anti-inflammatory blood cellsThe new blood cells belong to the group of our white blood cells called lymphocytes. The cells express a molecule called FoxA1 that the researchers found is responsible for the cells’ development and suppressive functions.”We knew that some unidentified blood cells were able to inhibit multiple sclerosis-like disease in mice and through gene analysis we found out, that these cells are a subset of our lymphocytes expressing the gene FoxA1. Importantly, when inserting FoxA1 into normal lymphocytes with gene therapy, we could change them to actively regulate inflammation and inhibit multiple sclerosis, explains associated professor Yawei Liu leading the experimental studies.Activating own blood cells for treatment of diseaseFoxA1 expressing lymphocytes were not known until now, and this is the first documentation of their importance in controlling multiple sclerosis. The number of people living with this devastating disease around the world has increased by 10 percent in the past five years to 2.3 million. It affects women twice more than men and no curing treatment exists. …


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#Alzheimer, #Blood, #Brain, #Health, #Inflammation, #Major, #Medicine, #People, #Pregnancy, #Researchers, #White

Loneliness is a major health risk for older adults

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Feeling extreme loneliness can increase an older person’s chances of premature death by 14 percent, according to research by John Cacioppo, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.Cacioppo and his colleagues’ work shows that the impact of loneliness on premature death is nearly as strong as the impact of disadvantaged socioeconomic status, which they found increases the chances of dying early by 19 percent. A 2010 meta-analysis showed that loneliness has twice the impact on early death as does obesity, he said.Cacioppo, the Tiffany & Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at the University, joined other scholars at a seminar on “The Science of Resilient Aging” Feb. 16 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual meeting in Chicago.The researchers looked at dramatic differences in the rate of decline in physical and mental health as people age. Cacioppo and colleagues have examined the role of satisfying relationships on older people to develop their resilience, the ability to bounce back after adversity and grow from stresses in life.The consequences to health are dramatic, as feeling isolated from others can disrupt sleep, elevate blood pressure, increase morning rises in the stress hormone cortisol, alter gene expression in immune cells, and increase depression and lower overall subjective well-being, Cacioppo pointed out in a talk, “Rewarding Social Connections Promote Successful Aging.”Cacioppo, one of the nation’s leading experts on loneliness, said older people can avoid the consequences of loneliness by staying in touch with former co-workers, taking part in family traditions, and sharing good times with family and friends — all of which gives older adults a chance to connect others about whom they care and who care about them.”Retiring to Florida to live in a warmer climate among strangers isn’t necessarily a good idea if it means you are disconnected from the people who mean the most to you,” said Cacioppo. Population changes make understanding the role of loneliness and health all the more important, he explained.”We are experiencing a silver tsunami demographically. The baby boomers are reaching retirement age. Each day between 2011 and 2030, an average of 10,000 people will turn 65,” he said. “People have to think about how to protect themselves from depression, low subjective well-being and early mortality.”Although some people are happy to be alone, most people thrive from social situations in which they provide mutual support and develop strong rapport. Evolution encouraged people to work together to survive and accordingly most people enjoy companionship over being alone.Research by Cacioppo and his colleagues has identified three core dimensions to healthy relationships — intimate connectedness, which comes from having someone in your life you feel affirms who you are; relational connectedness, which comes from having face-to-face contacts that are mutually rewarding; and collective connectedness, which comes from feeling that you’re part of a group or collective beyond individual existence.It is not solitude or physical isolation itself, but rather the subjective sense of isolation that Cacioppo’s work shows to be so profoundly disruptive. Older people living alone are not necessary lonely if they remain socially engaged and enjoy the company of those around them. …


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#Advancement, #American, #Company, #Health, #Life, #People, #Pregnancy, #Professor, #Psychology, #Social, #William

America"s natural gas system is leaking methane and in need of a fix

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The first thorough comparison of evidence for natural gas system leaks confirms that organizations including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have underestimated U.S. methane emissions generally, as well as those from the natural gas industry specifically.Natural gas consists predominantly of methane. Even small leaks from the natural gas system are important because methane is a potent greenhouse gas — about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. A study, “Methane Leakage from North American Natural Gas Systems,” published in the Feb. 14 issue of the journal Science, synthesizes diverse findings from more than 200 studies ranging in scope from local gas processing plants to total emissions from the United States and Canada.”People who go out and actually measure methane pretty consistently find more emissions than we expect,” said the lead author of the new analysis, Adam Brandt, an assistant professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford University. “Atmospheric tests covering the entire country indicate emissions around 50 percent more than EPA estimates,” said Brandt. “And that’s a moderate estimate.”The standard approach to estimating total methane emissions is to multiply the amount of methane thought to be emitted by a particular kind of source, such as leaks at natural gas processing plants or belching cattle, by the number of that source type in a region or country. The products are then totaled to estimate all emissions. The EPA does not include natural methane sources, like wetlands and geologic seeps.The national natural gas infrastructure has a combination of intentional leaks, often for safety purposes, and unintentional emissions, like faulty valves and cracks in pipelines. In the United States, the emission rates of particular gas industry components — from wells to burner tips — were established by the EPA in the 1990s.Since then, many studies have tested gas industry components to determine whether the EPA’s emission rates are accurate, and a majority of these have found the EPA’s rates too low. …


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#Agency, #Alzheimer, #Brandt, #California, #Count, #Department, #Energy, #Epa, #People, #Pregnancy, #Science

Geographic variation of human gut microbes tied to obesity

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People living in cold, northern latitudes have bacteria in their guts that may predispose them to obesity, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Arizona, Tucson.The researchers’ analysis of the gut microbes of more than a thousand people from around the world showed that those living in northern latitudes had more gut bacteria that have been linked to obesity than did people living farther south.The meta-analysis of six earlier studies was published this month in the online journal Biology Letters by UC Berkeley graduate student Taichi Suzuki and evolutionary biology professor Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona.”People think obesity is a bad thing, but maybe in the past getting more fat and more energy from the diet might have been important to survival in cold places. Our gut microbes today might be influenced by our ancestors,” said Suzuki, noting that one theory is that obesity-linked bacteria are better at extracting energy from food. “This suggests that what we call ‘healthy microbiota’ may differ in different geographic regions.”"This observation is pretty cool, but it is not clear why we are seeing the relationship we do with latitude,” Worobey said. “There is something amazing and weird going on with microbiomes.”To Worobey, the results are fascinating from an evolutionary biology perspective. “Maybe changes to your gut community of bacteria are important for allowing populations to adapt to different environmental conditions in lots of animals, including humans,” he said.Body size increases with latitudeSuzuki proposed the study while rotating through Worobey’s lab during his first year as a graduate student at the University of Arizona. Studies of gut microbes have become a hot research area among scientists because the proportion of different types of bacteria and Archaea in the gut seems to be correlated with diseases ranging from diabetes and obesity to cancer. In particular, the group of bacteria called Firmicutes seems to dominate in the intestines of obese people — and obese mice — while a group called Bacteroidetes dominates in slimmer people and mice.Suzuki reasoned that, since animals and humans in the north tend to be larger in size — an observation called Bergmann’s rule — then perhaps their gut microbiota would contain a greater proportion of Firmicutes than Bacteriodetes. While at the University of Arizona, and since moving to UC Berkeley, Suzuki has been studying how rodents adapt to living at different latitudes.”It was almost as a lark,” Woroby said. “Taichi thought that if Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes are linked to obesity, why not look at large scale trends in humans. When he came back with results that really showed there was something to it, it was quite a surprise.”Suzuki used data published in six previous studies, totaling 1,020 people from 23 populations in Africa, Europe, North and South America and Asia. …


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#Africa, #Agriculture, #Alzheimer, #Arizona, #Biology, #California, #Europe, #Health, #People, #University

Child Obesity: Using Attention modification program to decrease overeating in obese children

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Among the multiple factors that can cause obesity is an abnormal neurocognitive or behavioral response to food cues. The brain becomes wired to seek — and expect — greater rewards from food, which leads to unhealthful overeating.Attention modification programs, which train a person to ignore or disregard specific, problematic cues or triggers, have been used effectively to treat cases of anxiety and substance abuse. In a novel study published this week in the journal Appetite, Kerri Boutelle, PhD, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, and colleagues report using a single session of attention modification to decrease overeating in obese children.”Attentional bias is a long-studied psychological phenomenon,” said Boutelle. “Attentional bias to food means that food grabs a person’s attention. If two people were in a room with potato chips on the table, the person with attentional bias would be paying attention to, maybe looking at, the chips and the person without the bias would not really notice or pay attention to them.”We believe that there is a group of people who are inherently sensitive to food cues and, over time, eating in response to paying attention to food makes them pay even more attention. It’s based on Pavlovian conditioning.”Obesity in the United States is a well-documented problem, with more than a third of American adults considered to be obese. Child obesity is equally alarming, with an estimated one-third of American children (4 to 5 million individuals) overweight or obese. These children are at greater risk for cardiovascular disease, cancer, orthopedic and endocrine conditions and more likely to die earlier.Boutelle and colleagues investigated whether attention modification training might be another way to treat problematic eating and obesity in children. In a novel pilot study, they recruited 24 overweight and obese children between the ages of 8 and 12 and split them into two groups.One group underwent an attention modification program (AMP) in which they watched pairs of words quickly flash upon a computer screen. One was a food word, such as “cake;” the other was a non-food word, such as “desk.” After the words had flashed and disappeared, a letter appeared on-screen in the place of either the food word or the non-food word. …


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#Amp, #Attentional, #Boutelle, #Cancer, #Food, #Journal, #Medicine, #People, #Pregnancy, #Science, #Story

Meeting the eye-witnesses of ocean change

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Members of the German research network BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification) are developing a model that links ecosystem changes triggered by ocean acidification and climate change with their economic and societal consequences. Workshops and interviews with stakeholders from the Norwegian fishing industry and tourism sector, the government and environmental organisations help them to identify key aspects for their assessment.During the past ten years, scientists have learned a lot about the effects of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems. It has become obvious that with rising carbon dioxide emissions from human activities, oceans absorb larger amounts of this greenhouse gas and become more acidic. The increase of acidity, rising water temperatures and other stressors may alter marine ecosystems dramatically — with consequences for economy and society.Do stakeholders of the economic sectors which depend on the sea already observe signs of ocean change? Which are their most urgent questions towards science? Within the framework of the German research network BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification), scientists from the University of Bremen investigated stakeholders’ state of knowledge and identified focal points for further research. Between March and November 2013, they held workshops and interviewed more than 30 Norwegian fishers, representatives from fishing associations, aquaculture, tourism, environmental organisations and governmental agencies. They aim to develop a model that yields insights into the overall impacts of ocean change for ecosystems and the services they provide to human societies.”Taking a systems view can help to analyse socio-economic impacts of ocean acidification and find ways to mitigate them and adapt to them,” Dr. Stefan Gling-Reisemann, researcher at the Sustainability Research Center (artec) at the University of Bremen explains. “This is why we connect stakeholders and scientists and adapt further research to the demands of society.” Norway was chosen because the fishing industry, a branch that is likely to be hit first by effects of climate change, plays a very important economic role there. …


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#Change, #Climate, #Ecology, #Health, #Northern, #Norway, #Norwegian, #Oceanacidification, #People, #Research, #Result, #Science

Weight loss surgery increases social acceptance, but body remains problematic

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All of a sudden the once obese women are treated with respect in society. But underneath the clothes the skin is saggy and it takes a long time to become familiar with the “new” stomach.Food which was easily digested one day makes them sick the next. The slimmer they get, the more loosely hangs the skin on their body. They get looks from men which they didn’t get before. They used to be morbidly obese and super visible, yet completely invisible.They used to have to shout in order to be heard at work. Today, people ask their opinion. It is provoking. And it is nice. It feels ambivalent, and it is a challenge. And if everything used to revolve around food before, it certainly does so now.In her doctoral thesis, Karen Synne Groven at the University of Oslo has interviewed 22 women who have been through the bariatric surgery gastric bypass, in which the stomach is reduced significantly and part of the small intestine is re-routed in order to reduce the intake of food.The interviewees are between the age of 24 and 54. …


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#Alternative-Medicine, #Alzheimer, #Eating, #Operation, #Organization, #People, #Research, #Science

Fish living near the equator will not thrive in the warmer oceans of the future

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According to an international team of researchers, the rapid pace of climate change is threatening the future presence of fish near the equator.”Our studies found that one species of fish could not even survive in water just three degrees Celsius warmer than what it lives in now,” says the lead author of the study, Dr Jodie Rummer from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University.Dr Rummer and her colleagues studied six common species of fish living on coral reefs near the equator. She says many species in this region only experience a very narrow range of temperatures over their entire lives, and so are likely adapted to perform best at those temperatures.This means climate change places equatorial marine species most at risk, as oceans are projected to warm by two to three degrees Celsius by the end of this century.”Such an increase in warming leads to a loss of performance,” Dr Rummer explains. “Already, we found four species of fish are living at or above the temperatures at which they function best.”The team measured the rates at which fish use oxygen, the fuel for metabolism, across different temperatures — at rest and during maximal performance. According to the results, at warmer temperatures fish lose scope for performance. In the wild, this would limit activities crucial to survival, such as evading predators, finding food, and generating sufficient energy to breed.Because many of Earth’s equatorial populations are now living close to their thermal limits, there are dire consequences ahead if these fish cannot adapt to the pace at which oceans are warming.Dr Rummer suggests there will be declines in fish populations as species may move away from the equator to find refuge in areas with more forgiving temperatures.”This will have a substantial impact on the human societies that depend on these fish,” she says.A concentration of developing countries lies in the equatorial zone, where fish are crucial to the livelihoods and survival of millions of people, including those in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.In an era of rapid climate change, understanding the link between an organism and its environment is crucial to developing management strategies for the conservation of marine biodiversity and the sustainable use of marine fisheries.”This is particularly urgent when considering food security for human communities.”Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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