News in Science

[KanadaHye]

Re: News in Science

that's one of the biggest quack treatments of all time

Effective treatments take centuries to develop. If you take a look at the money being made by anti viral treatments of the AIDS virus which will never lead to a cure, nor do the drug companies wish to find a cure, flushing out your blood with iodine doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

[Haykakan]

Re: News in Science

LiveScience Staff

LiveScience.com livescience Staff

livescience.com – Fri Aug 6, 5:25 pm ET
Our personalities stay pretty much the same throughout our lives, from our early childhood years to after we're over the hill, according to a new study.

The results show personality traits observed in children as young as first graders are a strong predictor of adult behavior.

"We remain recognizably the same person," said study author Christopher Nave, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside. "This speaks to the importance of understanding personality because it does follow us wherever we go across time and contexts."

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Tracking personalities

Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse schoolchildren (grades 1 - 6) in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of those individuals 40 years later.

They examined four personality attributes - talkativeness (called verbal fluency), adaptability (cope well with new situations), impulsiveness and self-minimizing behavior (essentially being humble to the point of minimizing one's importance).

Among the findings:

Talkative youngsters tended to show interest in intellectual matters, speak fluently, try to control situations, and exhibit a high degree of intelligence as adults. Children who rated low in verbal fluency were observed as adults to seek advice, give up when faced with obstacles, and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

Children rated as highly adaptable tended, as middle-age adults, to behave cheerfully, speak fluently and show interest in intellectual matters. Those who rated low in adaptability as children were observed as adults to say negative things about themselves, seek advice and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

Students rated as impulsive were inclined to speak loudly, display a wide range of interests and be talkative as adults. Less impulsive kids tended to be fearful or timid, kept others at a distance and expressed insecurity as adults.

Children characterized as self-minimizing were likely to express guilt, seek reassurance, say negative things about themselves and express insecurity as adults. Those who were ranked low on a self-minimizing scale tended to speak loudly, show interest in intellectual matters and exhibit condescending behavior as adults.

Changing personality

Previous research has suggested that while our personalities can change, it's not an easy undertaking.

Personality is "a part of us, a part of our biology," Nave said. "Life events still influence our behaviors, yet we must acknowledge the power of personality in understanding future behavior as well."

Future research will "help us understand how personality is related to behavior as well as examine the extent to which we may be able to change our personality," Nave said.


Top 10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders
10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain
Personality Predicted by Size of Different Brain Regions


Original Story: Personality Set for Life By 1st Grade, Study Suggests
LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store

[Haykakan]

Re: News in Science

Surprising Effect of Sex on the Brain
Print
-- From the Editors at Netscape

Sex makes the brain grow. At least, it works that way in rats.

When we experience stress or anxiety, it can stifle brain growth, previous research has shown. So does the opposite hold true? Would pleasant experiences help brain cells to grow? Princeton University researchers wanted to know, so they studied the effect of sex on laboratory rats.

The study: LiveScience.com reports that the researchers gave adult male rats access to sexually-receptive females either once a day for two weeks or just one time in two weeks. In addition, they measured the blood levels of each rat for stress hormones called glucocorticoids, which the Princeton team thinks cause the detrimental effects that unpleasant or stressful experiences have on the brain.

The results:

• When compared with male rats that had never had sex, both groups of sexually active rats had cell proliferation, or an increase in the number of neurons, in the hippocampus. Cells in the hippocampus, which is a part of the brain linked with memory, are especially sensitive to unpleasant experiences.

• For the rats that had daily sex, not only did adult brain cells grow, but also there was an increase in the number of connections between brain cells.

• The rodents that had sex just once in a two-week period had elevated levels of stress hormones, while the rats that had daily sex did not experience this.

• The sexually active rats were less anxious than the virgin rats, which was measured by the fact they were quicker to eat food in an unfamiliar place.

The takeaway: While stressful situations can be detrimental to the brain, these effects can be overridden if the experiences that triggered them were pleasant.

The study findings were published in the journal PLoS ONE.

[Haykakan]

Re: News in Science

I wish Armenia had the resources to do this

http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/booming-china-lures-science-and-technology-professors-home-from-us/19634851

[Haykakan]

Re: News in Science

'Shocking' Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress

First Posted: 06/20/11 05:19 PM ET Updated: 06/21/11 09:09 AM ET

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Submit this storydigg reddit stumble If the current actions contributing to a multifaceted degradation of the world's oceans aren't curbed, a mass extinction unlike anything human history has ever seen is coming, an expert panel of scientists warns in an alarming new report.

The preliminary report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) is the result of the first-ever interdisciplinary international workshop examining the combined impact of all of the stressors currently affecting the oceans, including pollution, warming, acidification, overfishing and hypoxia.

“The findings are shocking," Dr. Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director, said in a statement released by the group. "This is a very serious situation demanding unequivocal action at every level. We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime, and worse, our children's and generations beyond that."

The scientific panel concluded that degeneration in the oceans is happening much faster than has been predicted, and that the combination of factors currently distressing the marine environment is contributing to the precise conditions that have been associated with all major extinctions in the Earth's history.

According to the report, three major factors have been present in the handful of mass extinctions that have occurred in the past: an increase of both hypoxia (low oxygen) and anoxia (lack of oxygen that creates "dead zones") in the oceans, warming and acidification. The panel warns that the combination of these factors will inevitably cause a mass marine extinction if swift action isn't taken to improve conditions.

The report is the latest of several published in recent months examining the dire conditions of the oceans. A recent World Resources Institute report suggests that all coral reefs could be gone by 2050 if no action is taken to protect them, while a study published earlier this year in BioScience declares oysters as "functionally extinct", their populations decimated by over-harvesting and disease. Just last week scientists forecasted that this year's Gulf "dead zone" will be the largest in history due to increased runoff from the Mississippi River dragging in high levels of nitrates and phosphates from fertilizers.

A recent study in the journal Nature, meanwhile, suggests that not only will the next mass extinction be man-made, but that it could already be underway. Unless humans make significant changes to their behavior, that is.

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AdvertisementThe IPSO report calls for such changes, recommending actions in key areas: immediate reduction of CO2 emissions, coordinated efforts to restore marine ecosystems, and universal implementation of the precautionary principle so "activities proceed only if they are shown not to harm the ocean singly or in combination with other activities." The panel also calls for the UN to swiftly introduce an "effective governance of the High Seas."

"The challenges for the future of the ocean are vast, but unlike previous generations we know what now needs to happen," Dan Laffoley of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and co-author of the report said in a press release for the new report. "The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now, today and urgent."

[Haykakan]

Re: News in Science

US RESEARCHERS EXAMINE ARMENIANS' DNA

news.am
April 02, 2012 | 15:21

The researchers from the University of California examined DNA
of Armenians who survived the 1988 earthquake to find out that
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be partially determined by
gene variants.

The scientists found out that people having TPH1 and TPH2 gene variants
are likely to have more symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,
BBC reports.

Two gene variants reduce production of serotonin which affects
people's behavior and mood. Thus, it contributed to development of
PTSD symptoms.

The study was conducted by a group of researches led by Dr Armen
Goenjian among 200 members of 12 Armenian families.

[Haykakan]

Re: News in Science

New drug for advanced prostate cancer

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120602134908.htm

[Haykakan]

Re: News in Science

MONDAY, July 2 (HealthDay News) -- Yet another report points to the possible health benefits of caffeine, whether it comes in coffee, tea, cola or even chocolate.

A study published July 1 in the journal Cancer Research suggests that drinking caffeinated coffee could lower the chances of developing basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer. The study also found that caffeinated tea, cola and chocolate also appears to reduce risk.

Women in the study who drank more than three cups of caffeinated coffee per day were 21 percent less likely to develop the disease than women who drank less than one cup per month. Among men, the risk reduction was 10 percent.

"It's the caffeine that's most likely responsible for the beneficial effect," said study co-author Jiali Han, an associate professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in Boston. "Caffeine inhibits tumor progression. We saw the effect in mice and thought we should do this research to see if it applies to humans, too."

Han said that it's likely that the more you drink, the lower the risk of basal cell cancer. But he's cautious about recommending coffee for everyone. "I'm not going to say we need to promote coffee based on this research, but this is just one more addition to the list of ways coffee has been associated with positive health benefits," he said.

The new research adds to a range of recent studies that have shown that coffee may protect against some illnesses, including type 2 diabetes, heart failure, Parkinson's disease, liver cancer and cirrhosis of the liver, and that it might improve exercise performance.

Basal cell skin cancer begins in the outer layer of skin and is usually found on areas of the body exposed to the sun. According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, about 2 million people a year are treated for basal cell carcinoma, which rarely spreads to other parts of the body.

The researchers found caffeine intake did not reduce the risk of squamous cell carcinoma or melanoma, other forms of skin cancer.

The authors analyzed more than 20 years of data from the Nurses' Health Study, a large and long-running study designed to track women's health, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, a similar project that involved men. More than 112,000 people were included in the analysis.

While the study uncovered an association between greater caffeine consumption and reduced risk of basal cell cancer, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Some experts urged caution about the new study. Rob van Dam, an associate professor in the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at National University of Singapore, said that while the study is exciting, the contrast in risk between coffee drinkers and non-drinkers was relatively small.

Van Dam said the potential benefit from caffeine may not be as valuable as other known prevention strategies. "We have very obvious ways to decrease your risk of basal cell carcinoma, methods that have been proven to be effective," he said.

Dr. Albert Lefkovits, an associate clinical professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, noted that coffee can vary greatly in its caffeine content, depending on the size of the cup and the strength of the brew. He said he also hasn't seen a correlation between coffee drinking and reduced risk of skin cancer in his practice. "I have many patients with multiple basal cell cancer lesions who drink a lot of coffee," he noted.

Lefkovits doesn't want people to think coffee is the new sunscreen. "If you want to drink coffee, go ahead," he said. "But it doesn't permit you to neglect using a complete sun protection regimen that includes seeking shade, covering up with sun-protective clothing, including wide-brimmed hats and UV-blocking sunglasses, and wearing broad spectrum sunscreen every day."

[Haykakan]

Re: News in Science

Armenians help build the latest mars explorer.

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg433164.html

[Mher]

Re: News in Science

Are Turks acculturated Armenians?

To the left you see a zoom in of a PCA which Dienekes produced for a post, Structure in West Asian Indo-European groups. The focus of the post is the peculiar genetic relationship of Kurds, an Iranian-speaking people, with Iranians proper, as well as Armenians (Indo-European) and Turks (not Indo-European). As you can see in some ways the Kurds seem to be the outgroup population, and the correspondence between linguistic and genetic affinity is difficult to interpret. For those of you interested in historical population genetics this shouldn’t be that surprising. West Asia is characterized by of endogamy, language shift, and a great deal of sub and supra-national communal identity (in fact, national identity is often perceived to be weak here). A paper from the mid-2000s already suggested that western and eastern Iran were genetically very distinctive, perhaps due to the simple fact of geography: central Iran is extremely arid and relatively unpopulated in relation to the peripheries.

But this post isn’t about Kurds, rather, observe the very close relationship between Turks and Armenians on the PCA. The _D denotes Dodecad samples, those which Dienekes himself as collected. This affinity could easily be predicted by the basic parameters of physical geography. Armenians and Anatolian Turks were neighbors for nearly 1,000 years. Below is a map which shows the expanse of the ancient kingdom of Armenia:

Historic Armenia was centered around lake Van in what is today eastern Turkey. The modern Republic of Armenia is very much a rump, and an artifact of the historic expansion of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus at the expense of the Ottomans and Persians. Were it not for the Armenian genocide there may today have been more Armenians resident in Turkey than in the modern nation-state of Armenia,* just as there are more Azeri Turks in Iran than in Azerbaijan. Many areas once occupied by Armenians are now occupied by Kurds and Turks. But a bigger question is the ethnogenesis of the Anatolian Turkish population over the past 1,000 years.

Dienekes has already shed light on this topic earlier, adding the Greek and Cypriot populations to the mix as well as Turks and Armenians. The disjunction between Kurds and the Armenian-Turk clade suggests to us that Turks did not emerge out of the milieu of Iranian tribes in the uplands of southeast Anatolia and western Persia. Like the Armenians the Kurds are an antique population, claiming descent from the Medes, and referred to as Isaurians during the Roman and Byzantine period.

Below is a reformatted K = 15 run of ADMIXTURE with Eurasian population. I’ve removed the labels for the ancestral components, but included in populations which have a high fraction of a given ancestral component. The geographical labels are for obscure populations. I’ve underlined the four populations of interest:

First, let’s get out of the way the fact that Turkish samples have non-trivial, though minor, northeast Asian ancestry. The Yakut themselves are a Turkic group situated to the north of Mongolia. The more southerly and central Asian affinities the nomadic ancestors of the Anatolia Turks may have picked up in their sojourns over the centuries between their original homeland in east-central Siberia and Mongolia and West Asia. The rest of ancestry is rather typical of northern West Asian groups. In particular, Armenians! Here is the ancestral breakdown for the four groups I want to focus on using Dienekes’ labels:
Population Greek Cypriots Turks Armenians
West Asian 37.6 54.1 47.2 56.3
Central-South Asian 5.3 8.6 18.2 18.4
North European 25.1 5.6 12 12.3
South European 27.4 20.8 9.4 8.4
Arabian 3.4 8 4.3 3.4
Altaic 0.3 0 2.6 0.1
East Asian 0.3 0.2 2.2 0
Central Siberian 0.1 0.2 1.4 0.2
Chukchi 0 0 1.1 0.2
South Indian 0 0.1 0.8 0.3
Nganasan 0.1 0 0.4 0.2
Koryak 0.1 0 0.2 0.1
East African 0 0.4 0.1 0
West African 0 0 0.1 0
Northwest African 0.3 1.9 0.1 0

And now the correlations between the populations by ancestral components:

Greek Cypriots Turks Armenians
Greek * 0.863 0.823 0.813
Cypriots * * 0.941 0.946
Turks * * * 0.997
Armenians * * * *

Let’s remove the East Eurasian and African components, and recalculate the proportions by taking what remains as the denominator:
Population Greek Cypriots Turks Armenians
West Asian 38.1 55.7 51.8 57.0
Central-South Asian 5.4 8.9 20.0 18.6
North European 25.4 5.8 13.2 12.4
South European 27.7 21.4 10.3 8.5
Arabian 3.4 8.2 4.7 3.4

And the recomputed correlations:

Greek Cypriots Turks Armenians
Greek * 0.747 0.640 0.647
Cypriots * * 0.901 0.908
Turks * * * 0.999
Armenians * * * *

With all the ~0 ancestral components which were common across these four populations removed the correlations have gone down. Except in the case of the Armenian-Turk pair, because I’ve removed the ancestries which differentiate them.

So what’s a plausible interpretation? A straightforward one would be that the Muslim Turk population of Anatolia has a strong bias toward having been assimilated Armenians, rather than Greeks. The cultural plasticity of Armenians in late antiquity and the early medieval period was clear: individuals of ethnic Armenian to origin rose the pinnacles of the status hierarchy of the Orthodox Christian Greek Byzantine Empire. The Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantines under which the civilization reached its mature peak were descended from Armenians who had resettled in Macedonia. Just as plausible to me is that eastern Anatolia as a whole exhibited little genetic difference between Greeks and Armenians, and the former were wholly assimilated or migrated, while the Armenians remained. One way to test this thesis would be type the descendants of Greeks who left eastern Anatolia during the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s. But the difference between Greeks and Cypriots also points us to another possibility: perhaps the Greeks of Greece proper (as opposed to Anatolia) were much more strongly impacted by the arrival of Slavs? One need not necessarily rely solely on the Scalveni migrations either, water tends to be a major dampener to conventional isolation-by-distance gene flow, so the Greek mainland may always have been subject to more influence from the lands to the north.

Whatever the details of ethnogenesis may be, it will be interesting to see how things shake out as we increase sample sizes and get better population coverage. These results may be due to regional selection bias. One might expect that the descendants of Rumelian Turks be more “European” than Anatolian Turks. But, these data do seem to suggest on face value that Armenians are the population which Anatolian Turks have the most genetic affinity with.

* My main hesitation would be that Armenians are a very mobile population, and their numbers within a modern Turkey may have declined simply through emigration, just as those of Christian Arabs have over the 20th century.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/are-turks-acculturated-armenians/