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The Importance of Attractiveness Depends on Where You Live


ScienceDaily
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:00 UTC
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© iStockphotoAttractive women in a city.
Do good-looking people really benefit from their looks, and in what ways? A team of researchers from the University of Georgia and the University of Kansas found that yes; attractive people do tend to have more social relationships and therefore an increased sense of psychological well-being. This seems like common sense, and might be why we spend billions of dollars each year trying to become more attractive.

However, the study, published in this month's issue of Personal Relationships, also determines that the importance of attractiveness is not universal; rather, it is determined by where we live.

The importance of attractiveness in everyday life is not fixed, or simply a matter of human nature. Instead, the impact of our attractiveness on our social lives depends on the social environment where we live. Attractiveness does matter in more socially mobile, urban areas (and from a woman's point of view actually indicates psychological well-being), but it is far less relevant in rural areas. In urban areas individuals experience a high level of social choice, and associating with attractive people is one of those choices.
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Disease-Related Depression and Fatigue Lessened by Mastery of Physical Goals

Diana Yates
Medical News Today
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:00 UTC
Physical activity is known to reduce depression and fatigue in people struggling with chronic illness. A new study indicates that this effect may stem from an individual's sense of mastery over - or belief in his or her ability to achieve - certain physical goals.

The study appears in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

"We base our arguments on fatigue being a symptom of depression," said Edward McAuley, a professor of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois and lead author of the study. "Interventions to reduce depression have consistently resulted in reductions in fatigue. The opposite is not always the case."

Depression and fatigue also are highly susceptible to changes in a person's sense of his or her own ability to achieve a certain goal.
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Diet High in Methionine Could Increase Risk of Alzheimer's


ScienceDaily
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:00 UTC
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© iStockphotoA diet rich in methionine, an amino acid typically found in red meats, fish, beans, eggs, garlic, lentils, onions, yogurt and seeds, can possibly increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a study by Temple researchers.
A diet rich in methionine, an amino acid typically found in red meats, fish, beans, eggs, garlic, lentils, onions, yogurt and seeds, can possibly increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a study by Temple researchers.

"When methionine reaches too high a level, our body tries to protect itself by transforming it into a particular amino acid called homocysteine," said lead researcher Domenico Praticò, an associate professor of pharmacology in the School of Medicine. "The data from previous studies show -- even in humans -- when the level of homocysteine in the blood is high, there is a higher risk of developing dementia. We hypothesized that high levels of homocysteine in an animal model of Alzheimer's would accelerate the disease."

Using a seven-month old mouse model of the disease, they fed one group an eight-month diet of regular food and another group a diet high in methionine. The mice were then tested at 15 months of age -- the equivalent of a 70-year-old human.
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Enzyme Behind Effects of Sleep Deprivation Discovered


ScienceDaily
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:00 UTC
There is hope for those who miss one night too many or whose children keep them up at night. The unwelcome effects of a bad night's sleep -- forgetfulness, impaired mental performance -- can be dealt with by reducing the concentration of an enzyme in the brain.

These are the conclusions of research published by Rubicon-grant winner Robbert Havekes and colleagues in the 22 October issue of Nature.

Millions of people are regularly plagued by sleep deprivation. This can lead to both short-term and long-term problems with memory and learning capacity. How sleep deprivation causes these kinds of problems was largely unknown up to now. Havekes and his colleagues discovered that sleep deprivation in mice undermines the function of a specific molecular mechanism in the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for consolidating new memories.
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Brain Imaging Shows Kids' PTSD Symptoms Linked to Poor Hippocampus Function


ScienceDaily
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:00 UTC
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© Journal of Pediatric PsychologyThe bright regions in these scans (at left, a top-down view of the brain; at right, a view of the brain from the back of the head) indicate greater hippocampus activity in healthy children during memory recall than in children with PTSD symptoms.
Psychological trauma leaves a trail of damage in a child's brain, say scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Their new study gives the first direct evidence that children with symptoms of post-traumatic stress suffer poor function of the hippocampus, a brain structure that stores and retrieves memories. The research helps explain why traumatized children behave as they do and could improve treatments for these kids.

"The brain doesn't divide between biology and psychology," said Packard Children's child psychiatrist Victor Carrion, MD, the primary author of the new research. "We can use the knowledge we get from understanding brain function to improve the psychology of the individual and vice versa."

Extreme stressors such as experiencing abuse or witnessing violence can make children isolate themselves from family and friends, feel disconnected from reality, experience intrusive thoughts about the trauma and struggle in school. "Post-traumatic stress is not only about the traumatic memories; it really affects daily living," said Carrion, who is an associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the School of Medicine and director of Stanford's early life stress research program. The research will be published online Dec. 8 in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology.
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Men Think Their Dance Moves Improve With Age


ScienceDaily
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:00 UTC
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© University of HertfordshireDr. Lovatt in his dancing booth at Hertfordshire.
Men may shuffle on to the dance floor this Christmas, but once there, they will be impressed by their moves, according to research carried out by the 'Doctor of Dance' at the University of Hertfordshire.

Research conducted by Dr Peter Lovatt from the University's School of Psychology on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme's website asked people to imagine they were at a party dancing with other people and then asked them to rate how good a dancer they thought they were compared with the average person of their own age and gender.

Almost 14,000 people filled in the Dance Style Questionnaire and the results show that although up to the age of 16, men lack confidence in their dance moves, after that their dance confidence rises steadily with men over the age of 65 having higher ratings than men between the ages of 55 and 60.

Women, on the other hand display immense confidence up to the age of 16, experience a drop between then and 20, and then confidence levels rise steadily up to 35 and then drop steadily between 55 and 65.
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Drug Kills Cells Through Novel Mechanism


ScienceDaily
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:00 UTC
MIT and Boston University researchers have discovered that the drug hydroxyurea kills bacteria by inducing them to produce molecules toxic to themselves -- a conclusion that raises the possibility of finding new antibiotics that use similar mechanisms.

Hydroxyurea inhibits the enzyme critical for making the building blocks for DNA, so for decades it has been used to study the consequences of inhibiting DNA replication in E. coli, yeast and mammalian cells. It is also sometimes used in chemotherapy to halt the growth of cancer cells.

The research team, led by biologist Graham Walker of MIT and bioengineer James Collins of Boston University, showed that cells don't die after hydroxyurea treatment because their DNA replication is blocked, but because the blockage sets in motion a chain of cellular events that culminates in the production of hydroxyl radicals. Those radicals are highly reactive and can damage cellular molecules such as nucleic acids, lipids and proteins.

Collins has previously shown that three different antibiotics, which each inhibit different cell processes, all lead to production of hydroxyl radicals, which play a role in killing the cells.
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How Do We Understand Written Language?


ScienceDaily
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:00 UTC
How do we know that certain combination of letters have certain meanings? Reading and spelling are complex processes, involving several different areas of the brain, but researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the USA have now identified a specific part of the brain -- named the left fusiform gyrus -- which is necessary for normal, rapid understanding of the meaning of written text as well as correct word spelling. Their findings are published in the February 2010 issue of Cortex.

Dr Kyrana Tsapkini, from the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Dr Brenda Rapp, from the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University, studied the reading comprehension and spelling abilities of a patient who had undergone surgical removal of part of his brain due to a tumor. The patient's reading and spelling abilities had been above average prior to the surgery.

They tested the patient and a group of control participants using 17 experimental tasks, which evaluated their comprehension and production of written language, spoken language, as well as their processing of other visual categories such as faces and objects.
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For Older Adults, Participating in Social Service Activities Can Improve Brain Functions


ScienceDaily
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:00 UTC
Volunteer service, such as tutoring children, can help older adults delay or reverse declining brain function, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers found that seniors participating in a youth mentoring program made gains in key brain regions that support cognitive abilities important to planning and organizing one's daily life.

The study is the first of its kind to demonstrate that valuable social service programs, such as Experience Corps -- a program designed to both benefit children and older adults' health -- can have the added benefits of improving the cognitive abilities of older adults, enhancing their quality of life. The study is published in the December issue of the Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences.

About 78 million Americans were born from 1946 to 1964. Individuals of retirement age are the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. population, so there is great interest in preserving their cognitive and physical abilities, especially given the societal cost of the alternative.
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Journalists Exaggerate Claims of Pharmaceuticals, Misreport Risks

Ethan Huff
NaturalNews
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 06:00 UTC
Doctors and researchers are beginning to question the outlandish claims being made by the media in response to alleged breakthroughs in cancer research. In an editorial published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), several doctors expressed concern that news pieces fail to accurately reflect the truth concerning drugs and scientific studies.

Drs. Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin from the Center for Medicine and the Media at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in New Hampshire, along with Dr. Barnett Kramer from JNCI, examined media claims about a new anti-cancer drug called olaparib that was reported on in the acclaimed New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Though the study was uncontrolled and preliminary, some sources were claiming it as the most important cancer breakthrough in ten years.

Another report exaggerated study findings concerning alcohol and cancer risk. In response to a study that showed a two-percent increase in breast cancer risk from drinking one alcoholic beverage a day versus not drinking at all, one media source produced a headline that said, "A drink a day raises a women's risk of cancer", with no mention of the important details in the article. Perhaps a simple oversight, the coverage failed to accurately assess the truth and may have needlessly scared readers concerning alcohol consumption.
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