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Deep-voiced men not guaranteed to impress

Women might swoon over Barry White's deep bass, yet when looking for a provider, they find Justin Timberlake's falsetto sounds sexier.

A new study among African hunter-gatherers found that women who were nursing a child prefer higher-pitched male voices than fertile women who had not recently given birth.
Hadza women
© Coren ApicellaHadza women judge deep-voiced males to be good hunters, but not always good husbands.

The Hadza - hunter-gatherers native to northern Tanzania - have limited exposure to the mass media. Cut off from the daily bombardment of advertisements, pop songs and newscasts that's typical in much of the world, they were an ideal population in which to study innate sexual preferences, says Coren Apicella, an anthropologist at Harvard University and leader of the study.

Health

Web test could help beat the blues

If you're feeling down, taking an online test could reveal your risk of getting major depression and help doctors pinpoint patients in need of help.

Michael King and Irwin Nazareth, both from University College London (UCL), and colleagues, used 39 factors such as age, sex and socioeconomic status to create an algorithm that can predict the risk of being diagnosed with a new episode of major depression within the next year.

The team developed a preliminary algorithm by studying 5000 healthy volunteers, aged 18 to 75, in six countries in Europe over one year.

Pills

Serotonin Enhancing Pharmaceuticals

Presently, for the treatment of depression and other what some claim are other types of mental disorders that are at times questionable, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the drugs of choice by most prescribers today. Such meds, meds that affect the mind are called psychotropic medications. SSRIs also include a few meds in this class with the addition of a norepinephrine uptake inhibitor added to the SSRI, and these are referred to SNRI medications, which combined with SSRIs, are the number 1 top therapeutic class of prescriptions presently. While there are several available SSRIs presently, two SNRIs available are Cymbalta and Effexor. Some consider these classes of meds the next generation mood enhancers- after the benzodiazepine hype decades ago. Furthermore, regarding SNRIs, adding the additional agent of norepinepherine is presumed to increase the effectiveness of SSRIs by some.

Health

Young doctors still too tired for safety

WASHINGTON - Doctors-in-training are still too exhausted, says a new report that calls on hospitals to let them have a nap. Regulations that capped the working hours of bleary-eyed young doctors came just five years ago, limiting them to about 80 hours a week.

Alarm Clock

Agave Nectar, the High Fructose Health Food Fraud

Agave nectar is advertised as a "diabetic friendly," raw, and a "100% natural sweetener." Yet it is none of these. The purpose of this article is to show you that agave nectar is in reality not a natural sweetener but a highly refined form of fructose, more concentrated than the high fructose corn syrup used in sodas. Refined fructose is not a 'natural' sugar, and countless studies implicate it as a sweetener that will contribute to disease. Therefore, agave nectar is not a health building product, but rather a deceptively marketed form of a highly processed and refined sweetener.

Hourglass

Dirty teeth reveal ancient diet

Washington - Thanks to poor dental hygiene, researchers are getting a more detailed understanding of what people ate thousands of years ago in what is now Peru.

Dental plaque scraped from the teeth of people who lived as much as 9,200 years ago revealed traces of cultivated crops, including squash and beans, according to a report in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These ancient people also ate peanuts and a local fruit known as pacay, according to the report by Dolores Piperno, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the National Museum of Natural History, and Tom Dillehay, professor of archaeology at Vanderbilt University.

Cow Skull

France recalls tainted soymeal

Almost 300 tonnes of soymeal from China, used to feed organic poultry in western France, were taken off the market on Friday after testing positive for a toxic chemical, an import company said.

The soymeal contained melanine - the chemical at the heart of a scandal in China over contaminated milk - 50 times over the recommended limit.

'One of the three imported batches, was carrying 116mg/kg of melamine, while the average should be 2,5 grammes. All foodstuffs made from the same materials were taken off the market at the beginning of November,' Mr Christophe Carousse from the French farm cooperative told AFP.

Bulb

Information on fluoride isn't really new -- A recap on the poisoning of the public

So, the fluoride debate is on again.

The government has come to the conclusion that fluoride levels in drinking water should be no more than 0.7 milligrams per litre. Mike Bradley says any decision "should be based on science and health. It should not be based on politics."

I agree.

I also think the public should have the "new" information. Much of the information is, in fact, not new.

The Danish scientist Kaj Eli Roholm wrote of the dangers of fluoride in the 1930s. Phyllis J. Mullenix, a prominent U. S. neurotoxicologist, warned of its toxicity in the early 1990s. Many other prominent minds worldwide have added their voice.

Health

Rat Fleas Spread Heart-damaging Bacteria

Brown rat
© iStockphoto/Andrew HoweBrown Rat. Brown rats may now be carrying bacteria that can cause serious heart disease in humans. Rat fleas can spread the disease.
Bacteria that can cause serious heart disease in humans are being spread by rat fleas, sparking concern that the infections could become a bigger problem in humans. Research published in the December issue of the Journal of Medical Microbiology suggests that brown rats, the biggest and most common rats in Europe, may now be carrying the bacteria.

Since the early 1990s, more than 20 species of Bartonella bacteria have been discovered. They are considered to be emerging zoonotic pathogens, because they can cause serious illness in humans worldwide from heart disease to infection of the spleen and nervous system.

Pills

Europe Accuses Drug Makers of Padding Health Care Costs

Neelie Kroes
© Virginia Mayo/Associated PressNeelie Kroes, competition commissioner, said she would not hesitate to open antitrust cases.
The European Union accused drug companies on Friday of adding billions of dollars to health care costs by delaying or blocking the sale of less expensive generic medicines.

One common tactic, said Neelie Kroes, the European competition commissioner, was for drug companies to amass patents to protect active ingredients in the medicines - in one case, 1,300 patents for a single drug. Another tactic, she said, was for pharmaceutical companies to sue the makers of generic drugs for ostensible patent violations, which tended to delay the availability of the lower-cost products for years.

Ms. Kroes made her comments Friday while presenting the preliminary findings of a broad investigation into accusations of anticompetitive practices in the drug sector. She also turned her sights on the generics companies, which she said had received $200 million from pharmaceutical companies over seven years in exchange for holding their products off the market.