As Bad as the Rest of Us
I laughed out loud while listening to my NPR station, WUWF in Pensacola. The interview was on Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, and if you click on the blue type, it will take you to the 12 minute interview. I laughed because he starts out telling us that we’re all pretty much the same, and that people who live longer have some tiny genetic differences.
I think of how hard we work to live long and prosper, how we try to control our fat foods, our salt, how we try to exercise more and to live faith-filled lives, all of which have been shown to correlate with longer lives. Only 7% of the long-lived people studied claimed a spiritual foundation. One 95 year old woman continued to be a heavy smoker. A good portion of the long-lived women did not have children. Men who survived to a ripe old age, they tell us, tend to be in much better shape than the women.
My grandmother lived to 105, and I have always wondered if I would be one of those who also lived long. Author Nir Barzilai discusses his study of people who live long lives and tells us that counter to popular wisdom, most of them had the same bad habits the rest of us had – many smoked, right up into their old age, drank, and ate sugary and fatty foods.
“We humans age at different rates,” the author states, and those who live long have good genetics – particularly a high HDL, the good cholesterol.
Now they are studying the particulars of the genes to further unlock the secrets to longevity.
AdventureMan and I love these Toyota commercials about older people and social networking 🙂
Statistics Anomaly
Yesterday, I had over two thousand hits on the blog, after a year of sliding statistics, which I attribute to being less interesting now that I no longer live in exotic locations, post the Kuwait sunrise (I used to have a loyal clientele of Kuwaiti students off at university who loved seeing the sunrise in Kuwait every day), and that blogging is not so new and exciting. I’m not blogging as conscientiously as I used to – I don’t have the time I used to have.
This morning, as I check the blog, I can see I have almost as many hits by nine this morning as I had yesterday. It makes me smile – here is what the most hit-upon posts are:
Ramadan is coming! Ramadan Mubarak, Ramadan Kareem to all those waiting so eagerly for Ramadan to begin.
Last night we had a big dinner for my Mom’s birthday, and got to hear a shred of conversation I wanted to share with you. I was sitting next to an old family friend, famous for asking questions that will start a conversation that could last the rest of the evening, and across the table was Little Diamond, my niece, actually now Professor Diamond. 🙂 If we were German, we would call her Professor Doctor Diamond 🙂
Our friend asked her what had surprised her the most about teaching on the college level and she answered that as she is teaching her culture classes, she brought up plural marriages, and it was simply a non-issue. She said there are a couple of shows, Sister-Wives and Big Love, and all the kids have seen them and know what plural marriage is all about – at least in the United States. She said it was a big change, that plural marriage used to be a hot topic, but now, not-so-much. It was fascinating.
Men, Porsches and Peacocks
Women! If you want to get married, stay away from the guys who drive the flashy cars!
I found this hilarious study on AOL Health News:
Are Men Who Flaunt Flashy Cars Not the ‘Marrying Kind?’
Conspicuous spending often driven by desire to have flings, researchers say.
By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay News
SATURDAY, June 18 (HealthDay News) — Men who drive Porsches or flaunt other flashy possessions are usually not the “marrying kind,” a new study suggests.
Researchers from Rice University, the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA), and the University of Minnesota found that conspicuous spending by men is often driven by the desire to have uncommitted romantic flings. They also pointed out that although flashy spending may get a woman’s attention, she won’t be picking out china patterns any time soon.
“This research suggests that conspicuous products, such as Porsches, can serve the same function for some men that large and brilliant feathers serve for peacocks,” study author Jill Sundie, an assistant professor of marketing at UTSA, said in a news release from Rice University.
Just as peacocks flaunt their brightly colored tails to attract potential mates, certain men show off flashy products, like brightly colored sports cars, to draw the attention of women, the study found. The researchers also indicated that the men who pursued this strategy were only interested in short-term sexual relationships with women.
Mileage Makes Me Smile
We just got back from our road trip. This time we took my little Rav4 since I barely put 5,000 miles on it this last year. We put 2255 miles on it, and (Ta DA!) we got an amazing 28.814945436888241 miles per gallon during the trip, even counting all the in-town travel we did in Pittsburgh (yes, photos and write-up to follow, first we have to get unpacked and I have to get some laundry started.)
Back a long long time ago, when I was in 6th grade, my parents took us out of school for a road trip, and my teacher gave me several assignments I had to do while I was gone those two weeks. One assignment was to keep track of the mileage, the gas consumption, and to figure the miles per gallon. (I also had to keep a daily journal, and to see how many different state license plates I could find while we travelled.) I’m such a geek, keeping track of gas mileage has fascinated me ever since. Cars do so many things better than they every used to. Nearly 29 mpg makes me smile.
Travel over the Memorial Day weekend also made us smile. We expected horrendous traffic and found calm, rational driving everywhere we went, even through the larger cities. . . it was heaven.
I love road trips. I get time with my husband, I have him all to myself and as we drive along every now and then he will start talking and – after all these years – I will learn something new about my husband. Someone makes the bed I sleep in and irons the sheets. Someone fixes my meals, and I get to eat what I want. I get to see new things and take a few photos. This trip we got to spend time with a very special group of friends we grew close to in Doha . . . What’s not to love?
US Highway Deaths Lowest Since 1949
The major reason? 84% US drivers use seat belts. You can read the entire article at AOL News
WASHINGTON — Highway deaths have plummeted to their lowest levels in more than 60 years, helped by more people wearing seat belts, better safety equipment in cars and efforts to curb drunken driving.
The Transportation Department estimated Friday that 32,788 people were killed on U.S. roads in 2010, a decrease of about 3 percent from 2009. It’s the fewest number of deaths since 1949 — during the presidency of Harry Truman — when more than 30,000 people were killed.
The Pacific Northwest region, which includes Washington state, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska, saw fatalities fall 12 percent. Western states including Arizona, California and Hawaii also posted large declines.
Government officials said the number of deaths was still significant but credited efforts on multiple fronts to make roadways safer.
“Too many of our friends and neighbors are killed in preventable roadway tragedies every day,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “We will continue doing everything possible to make cars safer, increase seat belt use, put a stop to drunk driving and distracted driving and encourage drivers to put safety first.”
Flu Spreads Through Social Network
This is fresh off the press at The New York Times
Close Look at a Flu Outbreak Upends Some Common Wisdom
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: February 3, 2011
If you or your child came down with influenza during the H1N1, or swine flu, outbreak in 2009, it may not have happened the way you thought it did.
A new study of a 2009 epidemic at a school in Pennsylvania has found that children most likely did not catch it by sitting near an infected classmate, and that adults who got sick were probably not infected by their own children.
Closing the school after the epidemic was under way did little to slow the rate of transmission, the study found, and the most common way the disease spread was a through child’s network of friends.
Researchers learned all this when they studied an outbreak of H1N1 at an elementary school in a semirural community in spring 2009. They collected data in real time, while the epidemic was going on.
With this information on exactly who got sick and when, plus data on seating charts, activities and social networks, they were able to use statistical techniques to trace the spread of the disease from one victim to the next. Their report appears online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists collected data on 370 students from 295 households. Almost 35 percent of the students and more than 15 percent of their household contacts came down with flu. The most detailed information was gathered from fourth-graders, the group most affected by the outbreak.
The class and grade structure had a significant effect on transmission rates. Transmission was 25 times as intensive among classmates as between children in different grades. And yet sitting next to a student who was infected did not increase the chances of catching flu.
Social networks were apparently a more significant means of transmission than seating arrangements. Students were four times as likely to play with children of the same sex as with those of the opposite sex, and following this pattern, boys were more likely to catch the flu from other boys, and girls from other girls.
The progress of the disease from day to day followed these social interactions: from May 7 to 9, the illness spread mostly among boys; from May 10 to 13 mostly among girls.
“Our social networks shape disease spread,” said Simon Cauchemez, the lead author. “And we can quantify the role of social networks.”
Thirty-eight percent of children 6 to 12 were infected, compared with 23 percent of 11- to 18-year-olds and 13 percent of those older than 18. Adults were only about half as susceptible as children, but when they got sick they were just as likely to transmit the virus to others.
The school closed from May 14 to 18, but there was no indication that this slowed transmission. It may already have been too late — May 14 was the 18th day of the outbreak, and 27 percent of the students already had symptoms.
The scientists found no difference in transmission rates during the closure and during the rest of the outbreak. This, they write, confirms earlier studies showing that a school has to be closed quite early in an epidemic to have any effect on disease transmission.
Only 1 in 5 adults caught the illness from their own children, and this goes against one of the most common arguments for closing schools: that it will prevent the disease from moving from the school to households.
“Here we find that most of the infected adults were not infected by one of the children in their household,” said Dr. Cauchemez, a research fellow at Imperial College London. “This information could be used to understand whether it might be better to close a school, or to close individual classes or grades.”
Other experts were impressed with the work. “I think it’s a nice step,” said Ira M. Longini Jr., a professor of biostatistics at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “It’s a beautiful analysis of an important dataset. This virus spreads very fast among school-age children, so the topic is important.”
Happy National Day, Qatar
LOL, it’s early Saturday morning, I’ve finished my readings and I’m checking the blog. Unusually high number of hits for so early in the morning. I take a look at the stats, where I can see which posts are generating the interest, and I see this:
Some posts just gain a life all their own. Blogging is a funny craft; there are items you put your heart into and only your best friends comment, and then there are items you toss off, and they generate hits month after month. Blogging is a learning experience, and a humbling one.
Happy National Day, Qatar! 🙂
Lying Prompts Need for Cleansing!
Lying makes you want to wash your mouth out, LOL! Who thinks up these studies?? I found this on AOL News:
Parents who punished their fibbing children by washing their mouths out with soap may have been onto something.
Researchers at the University of Michigan found that people who lie have the urge to wash their “dirty” mouths afterwards, apparently in an effort to wipe themselves clean of their bad behavior.
“Not only do people want to clean after a dirty deed, they want to clean the specific body part involved,” study author Norbert Schwarz, a psychologist at the university’s Institute for Social Research, said in a statement.
Schwarz and co-author Spike W.S. Lee asked 87 students to pretend they were lawyers who were competing with an imaginary coworker, “Chris,” for a promotion. They were told to picture finding an important document Chris had misplaced. If they gave it back to him, it would help his career and harm theirs.
Participants were instructed to send Chris an e-mail or leave him a voicemail message in which they either told him the truth — that they’d discovered the lost report — or lied to him, saying they couldn’t find the missing paper.
The subjects then had to rate how much they wanted certain products, including mouthwash and hand sanitizer, and what they were willing to pay for them. They were told the items were the focus of a market research survey.
The students who had lied on the phone felt a stronger desire for mouthwash and were willing to pay more for it than those who hadn’t told the truth over e-mail, the authors said. But those who lied over e-mail had a greater wish for hand sanitizer and were willing to pay more for it than those who’d fibbed on the phone, according to the research.
Those who had been truthful had less of an urge to buy either product.
In other words, the scientists concluded, verbal lies compelled the liars to want to buy mouthwash; lying with their hands by typing an untruthful e-mail made them more drawn to hand sanitizer.
“The references to ‘dirty hands’ or ‘dirty mouths’ in everyday language suggest that people think about abstract issues of moral purity in terms of more concrete experiences with physical purity,” Lee, a Michigan doctoral candidate in psychology, said in a statement.
University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Dr. Christos Ballas told AOL Health that the compulsion to buy hand sanitizer may have been for another reason entirely.
“The preference for hand sanitizer may well be related to the fact that they were typing on someone else’s computer keyboard,” he joked.
He said the scientists should have examined whether the the cleaning products had any impact on the liars’ future behavior.
“An even better study to conduct would be whether the availability of mouthwash/sanitizer reduces ‘guilt’ feelings, or makes it more likely they’ll lie the next time,” Ballas said.
In the end, he believes the findings, which appear in the October issue of Psychological Science, tell us more about the relationship between language and our subconscious than they do about the desire to wash ourselves clean of our sins.
“We interpret this as ‘lies make you feel dirty.’ And so the resultant mouthwash makes sense,” said Ballas. “But this is a purely semantic relationship. What if lies made you feel … small? Would you reach for platform shoes? Thus, the real insight here wouldn’t be that lies make us feel dirty, but that our unconscious is entirely dependent on our language.”
February Barnacles
I rarely miss a water aerobics class. The Y makes it easy, even if I oversleep, there is also a 0930 class, or if I’m feeling bad, there are also classes on Tuesday and Thursday. Since I’m going to have to make it up anyway, I just go. I rarely feel bad enough to stay home, and most things I can schedule for after my class.
Any kind of aerobics class is funny. I try to be friendly to everyone, because these classes can be a real pain in the patootie if there are cliques or snobs, it starts to feel like junior high all over again, and God knows, that was bad enough the first time. Life is too short.
But there is one spot I really like. I like to be in the back of the class, so I can exercise harder or differently and not confuse anyone else. I’ve been doing water aerobics for a while and sometimes while the rest of the class is doing cross-country, for example, I will do it off the floor of the pool, or do an extra kick on the jacks, things like that, so it just works better for me to be at the back of the class. I also like to be at a certain depth, not too deep and not too shallow. So . . . regrettably . . . I am one of those people who have a spot.
Sometimes if I am a little late someone else stands in “my” spot and I have to stand somewhere else. I don’t worry about it, people in these classes come and go, and I usually get to stand there. If I don’t, I am still OK.
There are two other women on the back wall with me, who are pretty much always in their same places, and we really do have a good time. I joke that we are the barnacles, stuck to the back wall. This morning, I complimented one of them on her earrings, and she said they were amethysts for February, and as it turns out, we all have birthdays within one week of one another in February – all three of us, within one week. What an amazing coincidence.
She worked us hard this morning, and it is a good thing, as I fly this afternoon for Seattle. Keep me in your prayers for safe travels, and travel mercies, please!
Papaya Fights Cancer
Researchers: Papaya May Fight Cancer
From AOL Health News
By Marrecca Fiore Mar 11th 2010 11:23AM
A study from researchers at the University of Florida finds that papaya has a dramatic anticancer effect against a broad range of lab grown tumors such as those that cause liver cancer and lung cancer.
In a paper published in the Feb. 17 issue of the “Journal of Ethnopharmacology,” University of Florida researcher Nam Dang, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues in Japan say they made a tea using an extract made from dried papaya leaves to fight cancers of the cervix, breast, liver, lung and pancreas. The researchers say the anticancer effects were stronger when cells received larger doses of the tea.
Dr. Dang and his colleagues also documented for the first time that papaya leaf extract boosts the production of key signaling molecules called Th1-type cytokines, which help regulate the immune system. In addition to papaya’s direct antitumor effect on various cancers, the signaling of Th1-type cytokines suggests possible therapeutic strategies that use the immune system to fight cancer, researchers said.
The papaya extract did not have any toxic effects on normal cells, avoiding a common and devastating consequence of many cancer therapy regimens, such as chemotherapy.
The success of the papaya extract in acting on cancer without toxicity is consistent with reports from indigenous populations in Australia and his native Vietnam, said Dang, a professor of medicine and medical director of the UF Shands Cancer Center Clinical Trials Office.
“Based on what I have seen and heard in a clinical setting, nobody who takes this extract experiences demonstrable toxicity; it seems like you could take it for a long time — as long as it is effective,” he said in a statement.
Researchers exposed 10 different types of cancer cell cultures to four strengths of papaya leaf extract and measured the effect after 24 hours. Papaya slowed the growth of tumors in all the cultures.
In a similar analysis, the team also looked at the effect of papaya extract on the production of antitumor molecules known as cytokines. Because the papaya was shown to promote the production of Th1-type cytokines, this raises the possibility of future use of papaya extract components in immune-related conditions such as inflammation, autoimmune disease and some cancers.
Bharat B. Aggarwal, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, already is so convinced of papaya’s restorative powers that he has a serving of the fruit every day.
“We have always known that papaya has a lot of interesting things in there,” Aggarwal, a professor in the center’s department of experimental therapeutics who was not involved in the UF research, said in a statement.
“This paper has not gone too much into identifying the components responsible for the activity, which is just fine. I think that is a good beginning,” Aggarwal said.
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