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Mercury levels in Pacific fish likely to rise in coming decades

By Guest PostSeptember 4, 2013Environmentatmospheric problem, bacteria, bioaccumulation, China, coal burning, fish, India, isotopic fractionation, isotopic measurement technique, joel blum, lantern fish, mercury, mercury emission reductions, mercury pollution, methylmercury, moonfish, north pacific ocean, ocean surface, opah, open ocean fish, organic matter, pacific ocean, photochemical degradation, power plants, rainfall, source, toxic form, toxin, university of hawaii, university of michigan

ANN ARBOR — University of Michigan researchers and their University of Hawaii colleagues say they’ve solved the longstanding mystery of how mercury gets into open-ocean fish, and their findings suggest that levels of the toxin in Pacific Ocean fish will likely rise in coming decades.

Using isotopic measurement techniques developed at U-M, the researchers determined that up to 80 percent of the toxic form of mercury, called methylmercury, found in the tissues of deep-feeding North Pacific Ocean fish is produced deep in the ocean, most likely by bacteria clinging to sinking bits of organic matter. (more…)

Poor concentration: Poverty reduces brainpower needed for navigating other areas of life

By Guest PostSeptember 4, 2013Scienceanandi mani, cognitive function, easy, eldar shafir, financial woe, hard, harvard university, ifmr trust, India, iq, jiaying zhao, journal science, mental tax, money situation, new jersey, poor concentration, poverty reduces brainpower, scenario, sendhil mullainathan, university of warwick in britain

Poverty and all its related concerns require so much mental energy that the poor have less remaining brainpower to devote to other areas of life, according to research based at Princeton University. As a result, people of limited means are more likely to make mistakes and bad decisions that may be amplified by — and perpetuate — their financial woes.

Published in the journal Science, the study presents a unique perspective regarding the causes of persistent poverty. The researchers suggest that being poor may keep a person from concentrating on the very avenues that would lead them out of poverty. A person’s cognitive function is diminished by the constant and all-consuming effort of coping with the immediate effects of having little money, such as scrounging to pay bills and cut costs. Thusly, a person is left with fewer “mental resources” to focus on complicated, indirectly related matters such as education, job training and even managing their time. (more…)

Cool heads likely won’t prevail in a hotter, wetter world

By Guest PostAugust 21, 2013Environmentarchaeology, australia, Berkeley, brazil, China, climate, cool heads, crime, criminology, critical factors, domestic violence, Economics, ethnic minority, ethnic violence, Europe, hotter, human conflict, human history, India, land invasions, marshall burke, middle ages europe, Netherlands, personal violence, point of violence, precipitation, princeton university, psychology, solomon hsiang, somalia, south asia, Tanzania, temperature, united states, university of california, wetter world

Should climate change trigger the upsurge in heat and rainfall that scientists predict, people may face a threat just as perilous and volatile as extreme weather — each other.

Researchers from Princeton University and the University of California-Berkeley report in the journal Science that even slight spikes in temperature and precipitation have greatly increased the risk of personal violence and social upheaval throughout human history. Projected onto an Earth that is expected to warm by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, the authors suggest that more human conflict is a likely outcome of climate change. (more…)

Big feet preference in rural Indonesia defies one-size-fits-all theory of attractiveness

By Guest PostJuly 2, 2013Scienceanthropologist, big feet preference, brazil, cambodia, cultural transmission, culture, genetics, geoff kushnick, human evolution, India, indonesian island, iran, journal human nature, karo batak, lithuania, mate attractive, northern part, papua new guinea, recent evolution, rural indonesia, sexual selection, sumatra, Tanzania, theory of attractiveness, united states, university of washington, urban ecology, villages, western media

People in most cultures view women with small feet as attractive. Like smooth skin or an hourglass figure, petite feet signal a potential mate’s youth and fertility.

Because they signal reproductive potential, a preference for mates with these qualities may have evolved in the brains of our Pleistocene ancestors and are viewed by evolutionary psychologists as evidence that the preference is hard-wired into our genetic makeup. (more…)

Innovative intervention program improves life for rural women in India living with HIV/AIDS

By Guest PostJune 30, 2013General, Healthadey nyamathi, ahsa life, aids, aids in india, al, andra pradesh, asha, black gram, cd4 tcell, control group, epidemic, good nutrition, high protein foods, India, kalyan ganguly, living with hiv, pigeon pea, rural women, sanjeev sinha, school of nursing, ucla

A multidisciplinary team of researchers from UCLA and India has found that a new type of intervention program, in which lay women in the rural Indian province of Andra Pradesh were trained as social health activists to assist women who have HIV/AIDS, significantly improved patients’ adherence to antiretroviral therapy and boosted their immune-cell counts and nutrition levels.

The lay women were trained by the research team to serve as accredited social health activists, or ASHA, and their work was overseen by rural nurses and physicians. These ASHA then provided counseling and support to the women with HIV/AIDS, as well as assistance aimed at removing the barriers they face in accessing health care and treatment. (more…)

Grassroots women’s groups could halve maternal death rate

By Guest PostMay 29, 2013General, Healthadult learning techniques, anthony costello, audrey prost, Bangladesh, child death rates, cost effective, grassroots womens groups, India, local women, malawi, maternal death rate, money, nepal, newborn deaths, participatory games, pregnancy, problem in pregnancy, related health problems, role play, story telling, sustainable, the lancet, ucl

Women’s groups can dramatically reduce the number of maternal and newborn deaths in some of the world’s poorest communities, according to a new meta-analysis published in The Lancet.

The research incorporated seven trials in Bangladesh, India, Malawi and Nepal and looked at 119,428 births.

It assessed whether groups facilitated by local women, who received a short training course of around 7 – 11 days, but were not health workers, affected rates of maternal and newborn mortality. The groups use a range of methods – including discussion, voting and role-playing – to identify common pregnancy-related health problems and work out locally appropriate ways to address them. (more…)

What Happened to Dinosaurs’ Predecessors After Earth’s Largest Extinction 252 Million Years Ago?

By Guest PostMay 4, 2013Scienceadam huttenlocker, africa, after the extinction, Antarctica, asilisaurus, australia, biogeographic patterns, brandon peecook, christian sidor, daril vilhena, dinosaurs in tanzania, dinosaurs predecessors, earliest dinosaur, earth, expeditions to antarctica, fossil hunting expeditions, fossil record, four legged animals, h richard lane, India, karoo, ken angielczyk, largest extinction, linda tsuji, mass extinction, museum fossils, national science foundation, nyasasaurus parringtoni, paleontologist, pig sized dicynodon, predecessors to dinosaurs, roger smith, sebastien steyer, snapshots, South Africa, south america, southern pangea, southwest russia, species distributions, sterling nesbitt, university of washington, unorthodox places, zambia, zambian basins

Fossil-hunting expeditions to Tanzania, Zambia and Antarctica provide new insights

Predecessors to dinosaurs missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during Earth’s largest mass extinction 252 million years ago.

Or did they?

That thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia.

It turns out, however, that scientists may have been looking in the wrong places. (more…)

Study Shows How Vitamin E Can Help Prevent Cancer

By Guest PostMarch 30, 2013Healthakt, anti cancer effect, anti cancer property, cancer cell survival, cancer prevention, chemical analysis, ching shih chen, enzyme, formulation, gujarat, hao chieh chiu, India, mutation, naval kapuriya, optimize, phlpp1, prevent cancer, protein, pten gene, saurashtra university, tocopherols, treatment, tumor cell death, vitamin e

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have identified an elusive anti-cancer property of vitamin E that has long been presumed to exist, but difficult to find.

Many animal studies have suggested that vitamin E could prevent cancer, but human clinical trials following up on those findings have not shown the same benefits. (more…)

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