NewScientist.com news service Smoking damages almost all aspects of sexual, reproductive and child health, reveals a "shocking" new report. The document, released by the British Medical Association (BMA) on Wednesday, is the most comprehensive look yet at the effects of smoking on reproductive health and reveals a grim picture. Around 120,000 young men aged 30 to 50 in the UK are impotent due to smoking. It is also implicated in around 1200 cases of malignant cervical cancer and nearly 5000 miscarriages every year in the UK, warns the report. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4958 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN SAN FRANCISCO, — A new H.I.V. test has led health workers in North Carolina to identify what they and federal officials say is the first outbreak of the infection ever among college students. The outbreak, reported here on Tuesday at the 11th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, involved 84 H.I.V. cases in male students ages 18 to 30 from Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 31, 2003. The students, most of whom were black, were enrolled in 37 colleges, all but 4 in North Carolina. "We believe that this is a wake-up call" to direct new efforts to prevent further transmission of the virus among young people, said Dr. Lisa B. Hightow of the University of North Carolina. Dr. Hightow is an infectious disease specialist who worked with the North Carolina health department. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4957 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Do men and women react differently to being in love? If they do, it's all in their heads. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, looked at what happens to the brain when people are in the early stages in love. She and her colleagues, neuroscientist Lucy Brown at Albert Einstein Medical College and psychologist Arthur Aron at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, analyzed the MRI brain scans of 17 love-struck volunteers. The researchers found that when the subjects looked at pictures their loved ones triggers the reward centers in the brain. (For more on this study, see Addicted to Love). Fisher didn't set out to study the differences between love-struck male and female brains "We ended up with ten women who were madly in love and seven men who were madly in love," says Fisher. "So it began to occur to us, why don't we see if there are gender differences? And indeed there were." © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4956 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Good looks are nothing to sniff at, but if you're a male guppy in a murky stream, your body odor may be more important for attracting mates. Evolutionary biologists thought the female guppy always chooses her mate by his vibrant colors and swinging tail. But new research suggests that she may rely more on her nose when she can't see who's in the water. The guppy, a freshwater fish from South America, is popular among aquarium enthusiasts and scientists alike. The male's dazzling colors and the female's promiscuity have proved valuable for studies of sexual selection. Because the good-for-nothing male does not provide any food, protection, or territories, the female must make up her mind based on his color (the more orange the better) and behavior (tail vibrations are definitely sexy). Or so scientists thought, until evolutionary ecologists Adam Shohet and Penelope Watt of the University of Sheffield, U.K., decided to poke their noses into the male fishes' body odor. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4955 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — While humans try to outsing each other on televised talent contests, birds are doing nearly the same thing in nature, with the winners gaining peer prestige and female admirers instead of record contracts. According to a study published in the current issue of Animal Behavior, some male songbirds sing up to 12 times louder in order to be heard and admired over other birds. Females react differently. They give louder tweets when they are alone and can hear other birds. The findings may relate to humans, as human speech and bird songs rely on similar mechanisms. Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4954 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Sports fans are not the only ones to celebrate a win with a rousing tune - a chirpy African bird does the same, researchers have revealed. Mate pairs of the tropical boubou belt out their special victory song after they have deterred would-be invaders from their territory, suggest Ulmar Grafe and Johannes Bitz at the University of Würzburg, Germany. The discovery was made by accident, the scientists happily admit. They were investigating the birds' musical repertoire in the Ivory Coast when they noticed that whenever they packed up their equipment and left the bird territories, the birds would trill a particular tune. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Animal Communication
Link ID: 4953 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Gerry Everding — Voice-stress analysis, an alternative to the polygraph as a method for lie detection, is already widely used in police and insurance fraud investigations. Now, however, it is being touted as a powerful and effective tool for an array of new applications — everything from the screening of potential terrorists in the nation's airports to catching wayward spouses in messy marital disputes. Despite its booming popularity, a number of federally sponsored studies have found little or no scientific evidence to support the notion that existing voice-stress technologies are capable of consistently detecting lies and deceptions. "We tested one of the more popular voice-stress lie detection technologies and got dismal results, both in the system's ability to detect people actually engaged in deception and in its ability to exclude those not attempting to be deceptive," said Mitchell S. Sommers, an associate professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 4952 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Lab mice like a little extra space and a cage with a few frills. LAURA NELSON Laboratory mice may need to satisfy their curiosity just as much as they need food and water, according to a study of mouse behaviour1. They'll even take antidepressants if they aren't given the chance to run around and explore2. Christopher Sherwin, an animal welfare scientist from Bristol University, wanted to see whether confinement to a standard-sized cage stresses laboratory mice. He trained mice in normal laboratory cages to press a lever to open a door into an adjoining cage. He then varied the number of times the lever had to be pressed before the door would open, and monitored how willing the mouse was to keep working in order to get access to more space. Surprisingly, the amount of work the mouse was willing to put in was similar to the amount of work that mice generally do to gain access to extra food and water. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 4951 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New resource could help show how eye responds to surgery. MICHAEL HOPKIN Researchers have produced the most detailed map yet of the human cornea, the transparent dome that forms the front of the eye. Their efforts could help eye surgeons to hone their techniques and better understand postoperative complications. "We wanted to try and make surgery safer," says Keith Meek of Cardiff University, UK, who led the project1. "People need to know what they are cutting through." The cornea is responsible for two-thirds of the eye's focusing power. The 0.5-millimetre-thick structure is made of about 200 layers of a protein called collagen, which is arranged into fibrous bundles. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 4950 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer Scientists cast new doubt yesterday on suspicions that vaccines increase the risk for autism, saying large studies conducted in Denmark, Britain and the United States have failed to find a link between the childhood shots and the brain disorder. Other researchers, however, questioned the findings and presented evidence they said supported the theory that mercury used as a preservative in some vaccines may increase the risk for autism in at least some children. The conflicting research came at a day-long meeting sponsored by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which is investigating a possible link between vaccines and autism at the request of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 4949 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BEVERLY JABLONS Late one night in August 1994, I tumbled down the stone steps outside the United Nations headquarters as I was leaving a wedding party in the delegates' dining room. As I rolled down the steps, people seemed to step aside politely, the better to clear a path. The back of my head struck the last step with a resonating crack. I can still hear it almost 10 years later like a malevolent echo. The next morning, a lump on the back of my head was the size and shape of a computer mouse. I cupped it in my palm. After two days of rest, I arose from my bed. But when I stood up or sat down, when I walked or when I placed my head on a pillow or held it a certain way, I was overcome with nauseating vertigo. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4948 - Posted: 02.10.2004

By LINDA CARROLL Parkinson's disease has baffled scientists ever since it was identified in the early 1800's. Although some evidence suggested that genes might have a role in causing the disease, for the most part old age was the sole characteristic that patients seemed to have in common. But in the last 20 years, with the discovery that both chemical toxins and genetic mutations can lead to similar disorders, scientists are beginning to unravel the process that leads to the death of brain cells and, ultimately, rigidity, tremors and other symptoms of Parkinson's. "What we have learned in the last five years is just breathtaking," said Dr. Howard J. Federoff, a professor of neurology who is the director of the Center for Aging and Developmental Biology at the University of Rochester. "And my guess is that the pace will continue to accelerate." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 4947 - Posted: 02.10.2004

For tens of thousands of years, nobody knew how cold it was. They knew about ice and snow and the danger of freezing to death, but no one had thermometers. Instead, they used metaphors, often vulgar, to describe what the cold could do. In the 16th century, the thermometer was invented. But it wasn't until the 18th century that Fahrenheit and Celsius came up with their numerical scales, making polite conversation about the weather possible for the first time. General satisfaction reigned, if not with the weather itself, at least with how to talk about it, until the 20th century, when the wind chill factor was invented, complicating things. The start of the 21st century has brought even more complicated attempts to describe how hot or cold it is, by academic researchers, government agencies and private companies. Once again, nobody knows how cold it is. The thermometer outside the kitchen window may read 20, but then a voice on the radio announces that because of the wind, humidity and a fast-moving nonsense front it feels like 127,000 degrees below zero, that in fact the entire universe has ground to a halt because of the wind chill. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 4946 - Posted: 02.10.2004

When Cupid's arrow hits the heart, it starts a flood of brain chemicals that may keep us coming back for more. Anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University says the rapture of romantic love clutches the brain much like an addiction. "I think that love is a drug. It's one of the most powerful drugs on Earth. It's turned the world. Wars have been fought for it; wars have been ended for it . . .our novels, our plays, our poems . . ." she says. "People live and die for love, so I wanted to know what happens in the brain." Fisher teamed up with neuroscientist Lucy Brown at Albert Einstein Medical College and psychologist Arthur Aron at the State University of New York at Stony Brook to search for the brain's "love button" by studying the minds of 17 volunteers who answered an advertisement that read, "Have you just fallen madly in love?" Fisher said that she had no way of knowing from an initial meeting just how enamored each respondent was; some people were quite reserved in talking about their sweetheart, but a peek inside their brains told Fisher they were smitten. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Emotions
Link ID: 4945 - Posted: 06.24.2010

DALLAS – Increasing leptin, a protein involved in regulating body weight, in laboratory animals transforms fat-storing cells into unique fat-burning cells, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas report. They speculate that these findings could provide "a quick and safe solution" to the obesity problem in humans. Researchers attribute the change in the cell's structure and function in rats – from fat storing to fat-burning – to a massive increase in the action of mitochondria, the principal energy source of the cell. The increase in mitochondria, which also led to substantial weight loss in the rats, was found two weeks after researchers injected the leptin gene. Findings from the study will appear in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and are currently available online.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 4944 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tony Fitzpatrick — Marvin Gaye wailed in the '60s hit "Heard it through the Grapevine" that we're supposed to believe just half of what we see. Biomedical engineer Daniel Moran, Ph.D., and University of Pittsburgh researchers, have identified areas of the brain where reality and illusion are processed. For instance, the first time you don a new pair of bifocals, there is a difference in what you percieve visually and what your hand does when you reach for something. With time, though, the brain adjusts so that vision and action become one. The ventral premotor complex plays a major role in that process. But a new collaborative study involving a biomedical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis and neurobiologists at the University of Pittsburgh shows that sometimes you can't believe anything that you see. More importantly, the researchers have identified areas of the brain where what we're actually doing (reality) and what we think we're doing (illusion, or perception) are processed.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 4943 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Three books try to explain consciousness By Michael Shermer When he was still a student, Richard Feynman hinted at a career to come as a scientific wonderer when he wrote: "I wonder why. I wonder why. / I wonder why I wonder / I wonder why I wonder why / I wonder why I wonder!" Such wondering, and meta-wondering, takes us to the heart of what geneticist-cum-neuroscientist Francis Crick (who would know) calls "the major unsolved problem in biology"--explaining how billions of neurons swapping chemicals give rise to such subjective experiences as consciousness, self-awareness, and awareness that others are conscious and self-aware. The body of literature attempting to solve this problem is extensive, and getting one's mind around the field is a herculean task successfully executed by psychologist Susan Blackmore in her delightful introduction, Consciousness. Presented as a textbook, it is so highly engaging that I recommend it for general readers, too. In many ways, the book is structured like a brain, with loads of independent modules (boxes and sidebars featuring profiles, concepts and activities) tied together by a flowing narrative and integrated into a conceptual whole. The easy problem, Blackmore says, is explaining each of the functional parts of the brain, such as "the discrimination of stimuli, focusing of attention, accessing and reporting mental states, deliberate control of behavior, or differences between waking and sleep." In contrast, the hard problem in consciousness studies "is experience: what it is like to be an organism, or to be in a given mental state." © 1996-2004 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4942 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Similarities Between Chronic Wasting Disease and Mad Cow Boost Funding to Discover How the Former Spreads By Marc Kaufman, Washington Post Staff Writer Following the uproar triggered by the discovery of the first known case of mad cow disease in the United States, researchers and regulators are focusing new attention on a similar disease afflicting hundreds or thousands of "mad" deer and elk that roam freely across large parts of North America. Scientists have found no instances in which the disease in these animals has jumped the species barrier to people, cattle or other animals. But they say that possibility is both real and worrisome. The condition, known as chronic wasting disease, is also thought to be caused by prions, the misfolded proteins found in mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). But the deer and elk version of the disease spreads far more easily both in the wild and in captive herds. © Copyright 1996-2004 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 4941 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS WADE Decode Genetics, the Icelandic company that discovered genes for schizophrenia and osteoporosis, has found a variant gene that doubles the risk of heart attack and stroke among Icelanders who carry it, the company's researchers are reporting today. The company says it is starting advanced clinical trials of a drug intended to counteract the variant gene's effects. The company's chief executive, Dr. Kari Stefansson, says the drug may help more patients beyond those who carry the variant gene. Last year, more than a million people in the United States died of heart disease and stroke. But several experts on the genetics of heart disease said they were not fully persuaded by the company's evidence linking the variant gene to heart attacks. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

Keyword: Stroke; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4940 - Posted: 02.09.2004

By GINA KOLATA Treating back pain costs Americans $26 billion a year, or 2.5 percent of the total health care bill, according to a new study from Duke University, and far more if disability payments, workers' compensation and lost wages are taken into account. The costs are rising, researchers say, as patients get ever more aggressive forms of treatment. Back problems are the leading reason for visits to neurologists and orthopedists and the eighth leading reason for visits to doctors over all — ahead of fever, knee pain, rashes, headaches and checkups for healthy babies. More than 70 percent of adults suffer back pain at some time in their lives, studies show. A third have had it in the past 30 days. Yet for all the costs, for all the hours spent in doctors' offices and operating suites, for all the massage therapy and acupuncture and spinal manipulations, study after study is leading medical experts to ask what, if anything, is doing any good. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 4939 - Posted: 06.24.2010