Archive for March, 2010

16
Mar

Sexually Active Life Expectancy

By rankjen 0 Comments
Categories: Science News

A recent study that I was reading up on was about the life expectancy of a person, and how it related to their sex life. I found it quite interesting how they compared the average life expectancy of a male or female, and compared it to their responses to sex life-related questions. “One consolidation for women is that many of them seem not to miss it. Men tend to marry younger women, die sooner and care more about sex, the study confirmed” In this article, there were a lot of interesting stats that determined this statement. One of them is that among the people aged 57 to 85 that don’t live with a partner, 57% of the men were interested in sex, and only 11% of women.
Another survey that was done involved two groups of 3,000 people. One group was aged 25-74, and the other was aged 57-85. Of these groups, men who were aged 75-85, 40% were sexually active, and women this age only 17% were. Another peculiar thing is SALE. (Sexually Active Life Expectancy) In men, their SALE was ten years lower than their lifespan, and in women, it was 20 years lower. So, the reason I chose to do this article was I found it amusing, and I’ve never really thought about sexually active life expectancy before.

Does this study surprise you?
Why do you think guys are more sex-driven than women?

16
Mar

Rid Yourself of Bad Breath

By petenic 2 Comments
Categories: Science News

We all know how it goes, you eat a taco, tuna, garlic bread, or even chocolate, and you’ve got a problem, BAD BREATH! So here are 9 helpful tips towards ridding yourself of this affliction.
1.    Eat raw foods or drink juice
2.    Incorporate millet, one of the most healthiest whole grains into everyday diet.
3.    Watercress, green and leafy, most likely found in salads. It has a fresh and peppery taste.
4.    Alfalfa sprouts, are said to sweeten your breath and also found in most salads
5.    Avoid Sugar and refined carbohydrates, they tend to welcome bad breath and are bad for you teeth.
6.    Herbs and supplements, suggested to be taken with a meal, help breakdown foods so they don’t cause bad breath.
7.    Parsley when chewed is a alternative to the supplements, they freshen breath after meals.
8.    Fruit, is also a good banisher of bad breath when eaten alone, it also helps with digestion.
9.    Last but not least, and the one that many people already know it that when you brush your teeth it helps get rid of bad breath.
Here is the site I found the info on if you want to check it out for yourself: http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/health/2010/01/26/ways-banish-bad-breath?slide=9

And here are some questions for you if you wish to ponder them…
-Do you think that some of these methods are more effective than the others?
- If you were stuck in a situation where you couldn’t find any of these things and your breath was really bad what would you do?

05
Mar

Scientist may have found Cause for Chronic disease

By kimberi 0 Comments
Categories: Science News
From: http://www.abc.net.au/health/library/img/endometriosis_diag.gif

From: http://www.abc.net.au/health/library/img/endometriosis_diag.gif

Scientists from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine have found important clues that may help explain the cause of endometriosis.

Endometriosis is one of the most common gynecological diseases and affects more than 5.5 million women in North America alone. It occurs when tissue like that which lines the inside of uterus grows outside the uterus, usually on the surfaces of organs in the pelvic and abdominal areas, in places that it is not supposed to grow.

The two most common symptoms of endometriosis are pain and infertility. Most women experience the pain before and during their periods, as well as during or after sex, or just a constant ache. This pain can be so intense that it affects a woman’s quality of life, from her relationships, to her day-to-day activities. There is no yet discovered caused for endometriosis. Treatment consists of pain therapy and/or a hysterectomy.

The scientists of NWU School of Medicine, led by Serdar Bulun, M.D., have discovered significant abnormalities in people with endometriosis. These abnormalities are a result of a cell defect that happens during a fetus development when the baby may have been exposed to environmental toxins.

One of the irregularities found was a enzyme aromatase – which produces estrogen. Women with Endometriosis have too much estrogen in places like the ovaries and pelvic area. “Estrogen is like fuel for fire in endometriosis. It triggers the endometriosis and makes it grow fast,” Bulun said.

A clinical trial was launched in which inhibitors used to treated breast cancers were used in woman, post – menopausal, with endometriosis. The drug used blocks the estrogen from forming and also improves progesterone ability to respond.

Do you know anyone with endometriosis?
How would you suggest treatment for a chronic pain disorder?

05
Mar

Don’t give big dudes alcohol!

By beedang 1 Comment
Categories: Science News

angryman

It’s a pretty common assumption that when big guys get drunk, they get aggressive. Now its a fact. (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/56955/title/Alcohol_distills_aggression_in_large_men) Scientists tested males aggressiveness using alcohol and a placebo. The males were more eager to shock a fictitious opponent when given alcohol compared to the placebo. Women had little or no interest in shocking at all. There were some men who it didn’t affect, but of course there are going to be outliers.

Are these results surprising?

Why do you think men get more aggressive than women?

05
Mar

Chicken power

By meyedane 1 Comment
Categories: Science News

Scientists discovered that chickens have 5 types of light receptors that let them see many colors in any part of the retina. Birds are better at seeing colors and light then mammals. They think that these studies could eventually lead us use stem cells to treat almost 200 genetic disorders that can cause blindness. Scientists think that Birds likely have superior color vision because they weren’t  in a period of evolutionary history that was in the dark.  During the time of the dinosaurs most mammals became nocturnal for millions of years. Mammals had to adapt to the dark when birds descendants didn’t.

Do you really think this could lead to a cure for blindness?

Do you think being nocturnal in the dinosaur ages effected light receptors of mammals?

site: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100216101159.htm

05
Mar

sea squirts are just like us!

By smykjes 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Ascidian_(Rhopalaea_Crassa)_(4_cm)

Did you know that sea squirts share about 80% of our genes with us? They are the invertebrate that is most like humans. Scientists are able to inject foreign DNA into the squirts, so they can be used as a model to study Alzheimer’s because they have so many of the same genes as humans. They were able to put the Alzheimer’s gene into the sea squirts and they developed the plaques that indicate the start of Alzheimer’s. The squirts can now be used to test new drugs to see if they will work in reversing Alzheimer’s.
This article interested me because I’ve seen a lot of articles lately about different things being able to treat Alzheimer’s. This article stuck out to me because it seems so weird that sea squirts have so much in common with us, when they look nothing like us.

Does it surprise you that sea squirts share 80% of genes with us?
Do you think this will be a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s research?

Here is a website about sea squirts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate
And here is one that explains Alzheimer’s: http://www.alz.org/index.asp

05
Mar

Brain #2

By bailcra 1 Comment
Categories: Science News

357px-Digestive_system_simplified.svg

You have a second brain: in your gut. The Enteric Nervous System, as it’s called, is made up of “sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, or alimentary canal, which measures about nine meters end to end from the esophagus to the anus.” It contains about 100 million neurons-more than either the spinal chord or peripheral nervous system.

According to this article, the Enteric Nervous System acts as a small brain, complete with it’s own senses and reflexes, that controls digestion. This skips relaying information through the PNS and spinal chord to the brain and back, instead doing it all “on site.” However, professor Emeran Mayer of U.C.L.A. says that the ENS is too complicated to have evolved for the sole purpose of digestion. According to Mayer, “A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut.” In fact, every day emotional well-being may depend on messages from the second brain. Research has even uncovered connections between the ENS and autism.

Have you ever heard anything about the Enteric Nervous System?

Why do you think your gut would influence your emotions?

05
Mar

Did We Become Smart By Accident?

By grovste 1 Comment
Categories: Science News

800px-Cooking_snags_over_campfire

You like to cook your food right? I mean were not animals. Well that might actually be what separates us from animals, that we cook our food instead of eating it raw. Eating raw food not only takes longer to chew, but also requires more calories to process that raw food then cooked does. A new theory now states that we owe our intelligence to our ancestors who accidentally learned to cook food.

Harvard Professor Richard Wrangham thinks that it is not so much a change in the ingredients of our diet, but the way in which we prepare them that has caused the radical evolution of our species. “I think cooking is arguably the biggest increase in the quality of the diet in the whole of the history of life. Our ancestors most probably dropped food in fire accidentally. They would have found it was delicious and that set us off on a whole new direction.” he says.

Without cooking, an average person would have to eat around five kilos of raw food to get enough calories to survive. The daily amount of fruit and vegetables would mean a six-hour chewing marathon. The website that I got this was at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8543906.stm it has a great video about this new theory that gives even more information on the subject.

04
Mar

Our brain destroys our Memories

By howajan 4 Comments
Categories: Science News
From: http://hsc.unm.edu/som/psychiatry/neuro/images/brain.jpg

From: http://hsc.unm.edu/som/psychiatry/neuro/images/brain.jpg

Did you know that when we learn things our brain makes us forget it, on purpose. Our short-term memory and little details we forget are all part of our brains network. You know how sometimes you forget something that just happened. Or how everyone remembers something a little different. Such as if there’s an accident and there’s 20 witnesses none of them are going to remember the exact same thing, because as soon as they saw something there brain began making them forget things which id did not find to be important. The thing that makes you forget so much is a little protein called Rac.
This research was found by a group of researchers from several universities around China. They found this out by testing flies with smells, when the protein Rac was blocked the flies retained their memories longer. They also discovered that cases such as mental retardation have to do with mutations in the Rac pathway.
I never knew that our brain deleted our own memories. In fact I don’t think I ever thought about why we loose our short-term memory.

Have you ever had a problem from you Rac deleting your memories? What do you think it would be like if we had no Rac and remembered every little detail imaginable?

Site: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100218125149.htm

04
Mar

Sweet!

By petenic 4 Comments
Categories: Science News

potato

Sweet potatoes either you like them or you don’t, people say that it is one of the must haves for a Thanksgiving dinner, but what most don’t know is that the sweet potato like a super veggie!  It is high in nutrition, is available all year round, has potent antioxidants, it’s an antioxidant rich, anti-Inflammatory and much, much more. This magical veggie also can be connected to helping emphysema patients. Cigarettes have a chemical called Benz(a)pryrene which has a Vitamin A deficiency to it. Since this vegetable is an anti-inflammatory and is high in Vitamin A it helps those who are suffering from smoking diseases such as emphysema.
Sweet Potatoes can be turned into many different forms, including; pie, fires, burgers, donuts, soup, and probably salad (you can put anything on a salad, its like pizza.)
So go and get yourself something sweet, like a potato, and get a highly enriched meal, and recommend to any smokers you know, it’s a magical veggie so spread the word!
-    What other foods are excellent for you body? Ex.  Cranberries are good For your immunity
-    Are there other foods that can help those who are suffering from diseases, not all from cigarettes but others too?

If you want to check out the site that I got all this info from here it is: http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=64#healthbenefits

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