04.23.08
Posted in Evolution at 1:31 pm by site admin
Check out this article discussing how a mother’s diet affects the sex of her children.
“This research may help to explain why in developed countries, where many young women choose low calorie diets, the proportion of boys is falling,” Mathews said.
The study’s findings, she added, could point to a “natural mechanism” for gender selection.
The link between a rich diet and male children may have an evolutionary explanation.
For most species, the number of offspring a male can father exceeds the number a female can give birth to. But only if conditions are favorable — poor quality male specimens may fail to breed at all, whereas females reproduce more consistently.
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03.31.08
Posted in Evolution at 9:05 am by site admin
Check out this article talking about how guys are kinda clueless reading signals from women. However, its not your typical “she wants me”, but….
Rather than seeing the world through sex-colored glasses, men seemed just to have blurry vision of sorts, overall. For instance, the college guys sometimes mistook sexual advances as pal-like gestures.
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03.06.08
Posted in health at 2:18 pm by site admin
Check out this article about drinking to help forget things.
The age-old belief goes that alcohol helps people drown their sorrows, but in truth the bottle only makes bad memories linger, a Japanese study said Friday.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo concluded that ethanol — an intoxicating agent in alcohol — does not cause memory to decrease, as widely believed, but instead locks it in place.
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03.04.08
Posted in Religion/Philosophy at 10:32 am by site admin
Not sure which way to take this, but interesting read nonetheless.
Moses was High on Drugs
JERUSALEM (AFP) - High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.
“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,” Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.
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02.29.08
Posted in Environment at 10:06 am by site admin
Check out this article discussing how rain and snow may form because of bacteria in the atmosphere.
One might rethink playing with snow or walking in the rain as a new study by scientists from the Louisiana State University revealed that snow and rain might form mostly on bacteria in the clouds.
Scientists have long known that the ice crystals in clouds, which become rain or snow, need to cling to some kind of particle, called ice nucleators, in order to form in temperatures above minus 40 degrees Celsius.
Microbiologist Brent Christner at Louisiana State University sampled snow from Antarctica, France, and the Yukon and found that as much as 85 percent of the nuclei were bacteria, he said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press.
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02.20.08
Posted in Environment at 8:21 pm by site admin
As most people know there is a lunar eclipse tonight. However, its rainy and overcast here, so it looks like its a no-show tonight.
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01.21.08
Posted in health at 2:26 pm by site admin
This article discusses new research suggesting that a component in male semen enhances the propagation of HIV. Also, this article discusses how aggressive behavior triggers dopamine. This article suggests that cooking, and not a carnivorous diet drove the evolution of man.
And you believe cooking with that fire spurred the development of modern humans.
Here’s the way I tend to ask the question: I tend to think of the advent of cooking as having a huge impact on the quality of the diet. In fact, I can’t think of any increase in the quality of diet in the history of life that is bigger. And repeatedly we have evidence in biology of increases in dietary quality affecting bodies. The food was softer, easier to eat, with a higher density of calories—so this led to smaller guts, and, since the food was providing more energy, we see more evidence of energy use by the body. There’s only one time it could have happened on that basis; that is, with the evolution of Homo erectus somewhere between 1.6 [million] and 1.8 million years ago.
Finally, this article suggests that new SIRT1-activating diabetes medication has the potential to improve longevity in humans.
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Posted in health at 1:50 pm by site admin
Check out this article that talks briefly about how napping improves new memory retention.
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12.19.07
Posted in health, Evolution at 3:18 pm by site admin
Found this article talking about how anti-aging drugs do/don’t really work— more specifically, they can’t stop the inevitable..
Preliminary research suggests that mitochondria-rejuvenating drugs are capable, at least in lab animals, of halting these diseases and extending longevity. The research also suggests that, once they’ve reached the end of their traditional lifespans, these animals tend to die quickly and inexplicably, without any indication of disease or systemic breakdown.
If the pattern holds in people, death would not be preceded by months or years of suffering. It would also come without warning, forever catching family and loved ones by surprise.
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11.13.07
Posted in society at 11:17 am by site admin
Check out this article talking about the origins of chocolate. Instead of being sweet candy, it started off as a beer-like beverage. Kinda sounds more like hot cocoa than a sweet snack. I wonder if that means it was bitter too…
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11.12.07
Posted in health at 6:43 am by site admin
Check out this article talking about a man in Arizona who just died from the plague. I’m just surprised that the plague is still around.. and in the US too!
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Posted in society at 6:36 am by site admin
Check out this article regarding a new court order regarding judicial etiquette in China. Nothing terribly exciting here, just the normal be plain and simple, no beards, shaved heads, etc… What I found amusing was this quote from the court order:
Judges who broke the rules would receive “criticism and education,” and serial offenders would be fired, it said.
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11.07.07
Posted in society at 7:53 am by site admin
Check out this article about an girl born with 8 limbs in rural india. She is worshipped as the reincarnation of the Goddess Lakshmi , the Goddess of wealth and beauty.
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10.02.07
Posted in Education, society at 1:25 pm by site admin
Check out this article at the nytimes talking about how in the recent years the happiness of men have improved, while that of women has decreased.
Mr. Krueger, analyzing time-use studies over the last four decades, has found an even starker pattern. Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more.
Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past. Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes
One part I find particularily amusing is the hottie theory:
When Ms. Stevenson and I were talking last week about possible explanations, she mentioned her “hottie theory.” It’s based on an April article in this newspaper by Sara Rimer, about a group of incredibly impressive teenage girls in Newton, Mass. The girls were getting better grades than the boys, playing varsity sports, helping to run the student government and doing community service. Yet one girl who had gotten a perfect 2,400 on her college entrance exams noted that she and her friends still felt pressure to be “effortlessly hot.”
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Posted in health at 12:46 pm by site admin
Check out this article discussing how chocolate helps with chronic fatigue.
“Also high polyphenols appear to improve levels of serotonin in the brain, which has been linked with chronic fatigue syndrome and that may be a mechanism.”
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09.26.07
Posted in health, society at 10:33 am by site admin
Check out this article @ Scientific American about having a son shortens a mother’s life. Reasons include: 1. Boy’s put a greater strain on their mother’s because they have a heavier birth weight. 2. Testosterone impacts the mother. 3. Son’s are usually tougher on their mothers, and also their siblings.
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08.31.07
Posted in health, society at 1:52 pm by site admin
My god! My friend sent me this article about the dining and food in Japan. It soo crazy, that you just have to read it for yourself. There is a brief bit about ramen at the end— any myself being a ramen otaku (ramen geek) am compelled to include an excerpt about the ramen museum (Note: I like kimchi too, and during a trip to Seoul, Korea, I visited the kimchi museum).
The museum, which opened in 1994, was the brainchild of a local real estate developer and avowed ramen otaku—”ramen geeks,” Bryan Harrell told me, “they are the worst”—who thought it would be a popular idea to bring all the different styles of Japanese ramen together under one roof. He was right. The three-floor facility attracts more than a million visitors a year, many from neighboring noodle nations such as Thailand and Singapore. At lunchtime on weekends, according to Osamu Hitoe, the museum representative who greeted me, the noodle shops are jammed with as many as five thousand people. Indeed, the museum’s popularity has given rise to other epicurean theme parks across the land. There is the Sweets Forest, in Tokyo, and if you ever happen to visit the city of Yamanashi, in central Japan, you will find a modern glass-and-chrome museum devoted entirely to fruit.
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08.06.07
Posted in health at 8:41 pm by site admin
Check out this article saying how caffeine (whether in coffee or tea), helps boast women’s memory. The effects seem to improve with age. Unfortunately, guys dont seem to have a similiar effect.
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08.01.07
Posted in health at 8:24 am by site admin
This article talks about moderate drinking of coffee coupled with exercise helps prevent skin cancer.
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07.17.07
Posted in Evolution at 10:33 am by site admin
Check out this article briefly talking about the reason bipedalism evolved in humans— it saves energy.
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