BY JEAN LUND Men are such a funny species. My last boyfriend split up with me, saying he was jealous. He walked out of the door with the words: "You don't need me to have an orgasm. You do it all yourself." What can you say to something like that? There is no answer when you suffer from a medical condition such as mine. I have what doctors have recently identified as Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome. I experience up to 800 orgasms a day and I have no control over it. I could orgasm every minute of every hour if I let myself. I turned 'round to my boyfriend and said, "Sorry, buddy, but I can't help it. And even if you thought you could satisfy me, there aren't enough hours in the day." I haven't dated since he left more than five years ago. Copyright 2003, Digital Chicago Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4626 - Posted: 12.02.2003

By JANE E. BRODY Few people would disagree with the observation that this is the most stressful time of the year for most people, men as well as women. Holiday preparations, planned vacations, gifts to buy and wrap and send, homes and yards to clean and decorate, bothersome relatives you "must" spend time with, kids home from school, end-of-the-year deadlines. Let's see, have I left anything out? Oh, yes, painful reminders of lost loved ones who won't be around to share the joy — and stress — of the weeks ahead. To experts in the relatively young field of medicine called psychoneuroimmunology, or P.N.I., it is no surprise that many people get sick or experience flare-ups of chronic illnesses while struggling to cope with the stress-inducing demands of the holiday season. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 4625 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The Observer For some, the fear can drive them out of their own home. Others have to avoid feathers, subways, glass lifts or city squares that are filled with pigeons. Phobias appear in many shapes and forms, affecting at least a quarter of the population. But doctors believe that a cure may soon be on hand from the most unlikely quarter. They have discovered that a drug on the market for tuberculosis helps phobics to overcome their worst fears within a week. They believe it could be the anti-phobia pill which scientists have been searching for. Early results from trials have been greeted with some excitement. The medication, D-cycloserine, works alongside traditional talking therapy and speeds up the process through which sufferers can learn how to beat their irrational panic. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 4624 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Amanda Dunn, Health Reporter A Melbourne-designed computerised test will be used to assess brain function in a large American study of people with HIV who are taking antiretroviral drugs. Using a card game similar to solitaire, the test assesses memory and planning ability, and maps changes in a person over time. It is used to detect neuro-degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. Paul Maruff, chief science officer with CogState, the company that devised the test, said the US study aimed to uncover the natural history of the virus since the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in the 1990s. Copyright © 2003. The Age Company Ltd

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4623 - Posted: 06.24.2010

MADISON - Like junkies without drugs, mice without running wheels crave what they lack, suggesting that some animals can develop an addiction for exercise, report scientists in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Behavioral Neuroscience. We all know someone who can't get enough exercise: the marathon runner who jogged 26 miles in all 50 states, the neighbor who speed walks at the crack of dawn or the cyclist who zooms by every Sunday. We might say these people are addicted to physical activity. But the debate on exercise addiction has remained largely unresolved - until now, that is. The new study, conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, adds evidence that the same brain circuitry involved in other types of craving - such as for food, drugs or sex - is activated in mice that are denied access to the running wheel. The findings, say the researchers, lend support to the addictive nature of exercise in some animals.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Muscles
Link ID: 4622 - Posted: 12.01.2003

By DIRK OLIN Roses are red; violets are blue. But if we called a violet red, what color would it be? This is not a rhetorical question. How we label things can affect how we perceive them. Naming can impose meaning. And though science and anthropology have provided significant support for the proposition that color perception is basically identical across societies, recent studies have found evidence that we also see our rainbows through cultural lenses. Theories about color were developed at least as far back as the time of Socrates, in the fifth century B.C. But Aristotle's notion of seven basic colors -- with primary hues, related to the four elements -- held sway through the Renaissance. No enduring paradigms for the organization of color emerged until Sir Isaac Newton, building on the laws of refraction discovered by Willebrord Snell and Rene Descartes in the early 17th century, shone light through a prism and revealed the spectrum. This was not a purely scientific result, however, since Newton sorted out seven major colors to ''harmonize'' his categories with the (then known) seven planets and the seven notes of the diatonic scale. In the 1720's J.C. Le Blon's treatise on color revealed how mixtures could create secondary colors. As findings in recent years have demonstrated, however, color is in the mind as well as the wavelength. Yes, physical objects have intrinsic properties, and their absorption and reflection of particular wavelengths have an existence independent of the observer. But color is a neural response triggered in our eyes, a biochemical reaction processed in our photoreceptors and a psychological phenomenon occurring in our brains. Categorizing colors is also affected by culture and by our very acquisition of language. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 4621 - Posted: 11.30.2003

By ELLIOTT SOBER Fifty years before Darwin defended his theory of evolution in ''The Origin of Species,'' the French biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck put forward a theory of his own. For Lamarck, life has an inherent tendency to develop from simple to complex through a preordained sequence of stages. The lineage to which human beings belong is the oldest, since we are the most complex of living things. Present-day worms belong to a lineage that is much younger, since they are simpler. For Lamarck, today's human beings and worms do not have a common ancestor, even though human beings derive from wormlike ancestors. Darwin's theory was radically different. All the organisms alive today trace back to a common ancestor. And Darwin found no merit in the vague idea that lineages have an ''inherent tendency'' to develop through a set sequence of stages. Rather, he proposed a concrete mechanism -- natural selection -- to explain why lineages change through time and why they diverge as each responds to different environments. No wonder he was irritated when some of his contemporaries dismissed his theory as a mere restatement of Lamarckism. Darwin's successors further advanced the idea that evolution has no pre-established sequence of stages. Lineages evolve in response to accidental circumstances. Where Lamarck's theory sees the history of life as the unfolding of an inevitable pattern, Darwinism gives pride of place to contingency. In ''Wonderful Life,'' Stephen Jay Gould provided a vivid metaphor for this thought, drawn from the 1946 movie in which the character played by Jimmy Stewart gets to see that his world would have been profoundly different if he had not existed. Gould contended that life would have been profoundly different if conditions at the start of the evolutionary process and along the way were only modestly different. Human beings, and the features we have that we most prize, are radically contingent. Replay the tape and there would be no human beings, and nothing remotely like human intelligence and language. Indeed, there would be no mammals and no vertebrates. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 4620 - Posted: 11.30.2003

Inflammation of the placental membranes may increase the risk of cerebral palsy (CP), research suggests. The University of California found that the condition, chorioamnionitis, was four times more common in mothers who gave birth to a child with CP. CP covers a wide range of physical problems in which poor brain development or damage has affected the ability to control muscle and movement. The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. CP is the most common cause of severe physical disability in children in developed countries. It occurs in up to 2.4 per 1,000 live births. The condition is associated with premature babies, babies with a low birth weight, and multiple birth. (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4619 - Posted: 11.30.2003

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and GRANT GLICKSON When Mark Rosenthal suffered a stroke, he was too heavy and wide for a stretcher, so he made the jarring, bouncing dash to the hospital lying on an ambulance floor. The ride injured his back, and he felt as if his own weight would suffocate him. At the hospital, doctors wanted to give him an M.R.I. scan, but he could not fit into the machine. But in that ordeal last June, Mr. Rosenthal's gravest humiliation came from something as simple as having to go to the bathroom. He was in no shape to walk to the cramped bathroom — he might not have been able to fit, anyway — and the hospital's portable commodes and bedpans could not hold his 450 pounds. So, he recalled, hospital workers told him to go in his bed, on himself, saying they would clean it up afterward. "I just cried," said Mr. Rosenthal, 51, the treasurer of District Council 37, the New York City employees' union. "I refused to eat anything for six or seven days, hoping I wouldn't have to go again." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 4618 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A neuroscientist explains why labs such as the proposed Cambridge primate research centre are still needed to study monkey brains Anti-vivisection groups claim that animal research is unscientific. They say animal species, even monkeys, are physiologically so different from us that animal experimentation will lead to misleading results. That many vaccines and treatments against human diseases like polio were successfully developed using primate models can readily be gleaned from scientific literature as well as the internet. But what is the story about the obvious target for anti-vivisectionists: current and future research? Any source of information appears to be contentious in this debate. But one could turn to the Boyd Group, which comprises both scientists involved in animal research and anti-vivisectionists. The Boyd Group seeks points of consensus in their debates and publishes these in reports. (C) BBC

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 4617 - Posted: 11.28.2003

By ROWAN HOOPER It is perhaps rare for readers of British tabloid newspapers to ponder the same questions as evolutionary biologists, but that may have been the case last week. The tabloids enjoyed themselves at the expense of women suffering from a rare and often debilitating condition: persistent sexual arousal syndrome. (The Boston Globe also carried the story, though it didn't aim to titillate its readers.) The syndrome can lead to spontaneous, almost continuous orgasms, leaving the affected woman unable to concentrate on even mundane tasks. Some readers may have wondered what causes the syndrome (unlike the tabloid editors, who didn't seem to care), but no one really knows. As a consequence, women affected can be offered no instant cure. From wondering about what causes the syndrome, more thoughtful readers might have been prompted -- understandably -- to question why males are necessary, and indeed why sex between males and females exists at all. It is this question (the two ask essentially the same thing) that is a favorite of evolutionary biologists. This is not just because evolutionary biologists enjoy thinking about sex, but because it is one of the great mysteries of science. The Japan Times (C) All rights reserved

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 4616 - Posted: 11.28.2003

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR The number of new H.I.V. cases diagnosed in the United States is continuing to climb, and the most significant rise has been among Hispanics and gay and bisexual men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study by the centers, which appeared in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, looked at data from 29 states that included a confidential system that was started in 1999. The picture of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, might even be much worse than the data indicate because states with the highest populations and possibly the highest rates of infection, like New York and California, were not included in the four-year study. From 1999 through 2002, the number of new H.I.V. cases soared by 26 percent among Hispanics and by 17 percent among men who have sex with men, while the increase in new cases over all for that period was 5.1 percent, according to the study. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4615 - Posted: 11.28.2003

Why are academics like Richard Lynn still taken seriously when they claim that IQ is racially determined? Gavin Evans, The Guardian So, here we go again - all the way back to South Africa 1948, Germany 1933 and further, covering the logic of colonial conquests over centuries. What it amounts to is this: we rule because we're smarter than you (and, by the way, that's also why you're so poor and we're so rich). The current culprit - not for the first time - is Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ulster, who has a long track record here (he also "discovered" that men are more intelligent than women). Lynn claims that samples from 50 countries reveal that the average IQ in Africa is 70. Black South Africans, for example, have an average IQ of 66 - slightly smarter than the sub-moronic Ethiopians at 63. IQ, he claims, is an accurate measure of intrinsic intelligence, which means that Africans are thicker than the rest of us, and because "intelligence is a determinant of earnings", black South Africans and Ethiopians are poor. What is remarkable in all this is not so much that there are people who believe him - after all, there are still those who insist the Earth is flat - but rather that any creditable institution should take it seriously. Yet this week we've heard Lynn pontificating on Radio 4's Today programme, on BBC Radio 5 Live, and appearing in more-than respectful form in the Times. © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 4614 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Genetics researchers say they have found a gene crucial to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. As this ScienCentral News video reports, it triggers not if we get the diseases, but when. Genetics researchers at Duke University say they have identified a gene that controls both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. But this gene is separate from genes that increase people’s risk for the diseases—rather, it controls when symptoms of the diseases begin to appear. By learning more about the gene, scientists hope to find ways to delay the onset of these devastating ailments. Alzheimer’s affects about 4.5 million Americans and Parkinson’s disease 1.5 million—most of them elderly. As the population ages, these numbers will likely increase unless researchers find efficient therapies. Both diseases have genetic components, and scientists are working hard to find genes that can be targeted by drug developers. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Parkinsons
Link ID: 4613 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Male turkeys gobble to attract female turkeys in the spring, but the daily factors that control why and how much an individual turkey gobbles remain a mystery to experts. The puzzle soon may be solved, however, thanks to a high tech turkey necklace developed by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. News of the project was announced in a recent press release issued by the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF), an organization comprised of turkey hunters that is sponsoring the research. Copyright © 2003 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4612 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By PATRICK HEALY HICKSVILLE, N.Y., — Animal activists said on Wednesday that they were outraged by a history of problems at the Long Island Reptile Museum and called for the gallery of snakes, lizards and turtles to be shut down. The activists, who have visited the museum and taken some of its animals for rehabilitation, called conditions there the most deplorable they had ever seen. During a visit by the activists in the spring, they said, the reptiles were emaciated and dehydrated, some were covered with red and black mites and some dead animals remained on display. In addition, they said snakes and large lizards had escaped from their cages and were crawling around the rafters, a potential threat to visitors. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 4611 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Evolutionary ideas give farmers credit for Indo-European tongues. JOHN WHITFIELD A family tree of Indo-European languages suggests they began to spread and split about 9,000 years ago. The finding hints that farmers in what is now Turkey drove the language boom - and not later Siberian horsemen, as some linguists reckon. Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson, of the University of Auckland in New Zealand use the rate at which words change to gauge the age of the tree's roots - just as biologists estimate a species' age from the rate of gene mutations. The differences between words, or DNA sequences, are a measure of how closely languages, or species, are related. Gray and Atkinson analysed 87 languages from Irish to Afghan. Rather than compare entire dictionaries, they used a list of 200 words that are found in all cultures, such as 'I', 'hunt' and 'sky'. Words are better understood than grammar as a guide to language history; the same sentence structure can arise independently in different tongues. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 4610 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Drug to prevent lethal overheating may result from protein find. HELEN R. PILCHER Mice that lack a key protein stay cool after ingesting ecstasy1. Therapies to treat potentially fatal overheating associated with the club drug may follow. Estimates based on first-time users of ecstasy range from 1 death in 2,000 to 1 in 50,0002. Most fatalities occur because the body dehydrates and its temperature soars, causing muscle wasting, and heart and kidney failure. Rodents missing a protein called UCP-3 seem to be immune to these toxic effects, new research suggests. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 4609 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Background. The hippocampal formation has long been associated with the execution of higher-order cognitive functions, and impairment of this structure following severe stress and aging has been linked to cognitive disturbances. In order to understand the involvement of the hippocampal formation in the mediation of normal and pathological behaviors, much attention has recently been devoted to hippocampal neurogenesis. The dentate gyrus of the hippocampal formation has the ability to generate new neurons throughout the entire life. Surviving de novo produced cells develop into granule neurons and integrate into the functional circuitry. Neurogenesis has been proposed to play a role in hippocampal-mediated learning and has been implicated in the appearance of behavioral pathologies associated with the hippocampal formation. Aim of the work. Although evidence suggest that neurogenesis play a role in spatial learning, the effect of learning on cell proliferation remains unclear. The authors generated and tested the hypothesis that different phases of spatial learning measured in the Morris water maze have distinct actions on cell proliferation. In this task, two phases of learning can be distinguished: an early phase during which performance improves rapidly, and a late phase during which asymptotic levels of performance are reached. These two phases seem to involve different brain processes and consequently may differentially influence neurogenesis.

Keyword: Apoptosis; Neurogenesis
Link ID: 4608 - Posted: 11.27.2003

WOMEN who cannot have orgasms can now have a device implanted in their spines that will trigger the sensation for them. Clinical trials of the "orgasmatron" have begun in the US, with the approval of the Food and Drug Administration. The device was the focus of massive media attention two years ago, after New Scientist broke the news of its existence and used the term orgasmatron to describe it (10 February 2001, p 23).But despite all the coverage, few people are volunteering for the trial. "I thought people would be beating my door down to become part of the trial," says Stuart Meloy, the surgeon who patented the treatment. "But so far I am struggling to find people." That does not surprise some experts, who think an implant is too radical a treatment for sexual problems. "Why would you do it invasively if you can do it with a vibrator?" asks Marca Sipski of the University of Miami, who studies sexual function in women with spinal cord injuries. Only one woman has completed the first stage of the trial, and one other is now being signed up. Meloy hopes to find eight more to complete the first stage of the study, in which wires connected to a battery pack are inserted through the skin and into the woman's spinal cord.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4607 - Posted: 11.27.2003