Teenagers use violence to boost their social standing

A new study looks in depth at the social relationships between male and female teenagers, relational violence, and psycho-social adjustment factors such as loneliness, self-esteem and satisfaction with life. The results show that young people who want to be better appreciated and respected within their group are the most likely to be violent. "There is a growing interest in studying the violent behaviour of teenagers in school, which can have serious consequences for the psychological and emotional adjustment of the people involved and hinders the dynamics of a school", David Moreno Ruiz, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Pablo de Olavide University (UPO) in Seville, tells SINC.

This study, published recently in the Spanish journal Psicothema, focuses on the relationship between relational violence between teenagers, their social adjustment and their reputation, in order to show how young people who long for high "reputation status", in other words a social identity that will enable them to become part of a group and be respected, are more likely to use relational violence as a tool for achieving this objective.

Previous studies have already shown that some teenagers who are popular among their peers use relational violence in order to maintain and improve their reputation in their peer group. "Having high self-esteem is a key aspect, because this is important in inhibiting teenagers from indulging in behaviour that involves relational violence between peers at school", explains Moreno.

The new study was carried out on 1,319 teenagers at seven schools in Valencia, and shows that teenagers whose social status is questioned by their peers and are socially rejected by their classmates, or who do not have intimate friendships, suffer from greater feelings of loneliness, low self-esteem and low levels of satisfaction with their lives.

"We must prevent the development of teenage social identities that are based on harming others, using unjustifiable tactics that are damaging to others, as is the case with relational violence. We need to draw up appropriate psycho-educational programmes to prevent, diagnose and intervene in cases of such violence, in order to improve coexistence in schools", point out the researchers.



Relational violence is a girl thing too



Although the results of studies into this type of violence and its links to gender have been contradictory, the conclusions of this research show that boys use relational violence much more, except when the violent behaviour is used as a defensive response to provocation, when there is no difference between boys and girls.

However, contrary to popular belief, it is probable that girls make greater use of violence as a strategy for achieving or maintaining improved social identity within their peer group.

Relational violence is any kind of behaviour designed to provoke harm within another person's circle of friends, or to damage their perception of belonging to a group. The experts say this causes psychological damage, as it marginalises and isolates the victim, causing suffering that may sometimes be hard to recover from.

Early Menopause Can Result in Earlier Onset Dementia

Women experiencing an early onset of menopause could develop dementia at a younger age. Research by Tonnie Coppus of Erasmus MC has indicated this. She studied women with Down Syndrome, who are known to have an early onset of menopause. The results of her research can be translated to apply to the general population.



Women with Down Syndrome have an earlier onset of menopause compared to women in the general population, 44 years of age and 52 years of age, respectively. Coppus' findings show a strong relationship between the age of menopause onset and the age at which dementia is diagnosed. Coppus: "Women with Down Syndrome with an early onset of menopause also appear to suffer from dementia at an early age. In addition, my study shows that these women also die younger."

Alzheimer's disease is the major cause of illness and death among people with Down Syndrome. The Epidemiology department of Erasmus MC has been studying more than 500 people with Down Syndrome, above the age of 45, since 2000. In particular, the factors affecting the onset of dementia and death are studied. The health development found within this group is in fact an accelerated version of the developments found in the general population. The research results can therefore be translated to similar results for the general population.

A first step in the development of Alzheimer is the build up of so-called amyloid in the brain. The deposition of this amyloid occurs under influence of a certain gene, higher levels of which are found in people with Down Syndrome. Down Syndrome is a chromosomal disorder in which there are three copies of chromosome 21. This chromosome has various genes that play a role in neurological diseases. The most important of these is the gene that is responsible for the production of the protein amyloid. Coppus: "Studying the various factors that influence the development of Alzheimer's disease among people with Down Syndrome also improves our understanding of the role of amyloid in the development of Alzheimer's disease within the general population."

As it appears, not only can a relationship with the age of onset of dementia be determined but also a relationship between early onset of menopause and dying young. Coppus: "As dementia itself also leads to a reduced life expectancy, I made calculations in which I corrected the results of the effect of dementia on death. Despite this, the relationship between early menopause onset and dying young remains. The research results provide substantial information on the relationship between menopause and dementia and the relationship between menopause and death."

Facebook or MySpace, Youths' Use Reflect Face-to-Face Interactions

Though parents often have concerns about letting their teens use social media Web sites like Facebook and MySpace, a new study by University of Virginia psychologists suggests that well-adapted youth with positive friendships will use these sites to further enhance the positive relationships they already have.

However, they warn, teens who have behavioral problems and difficulty making friends, or who are depressed, may be more inclined to use social media in negative and sometimes aggressive ways, or not to use such sites at all.

The study appears in the January issue of the journal Developmental Psychology.

"We were interested to find that the best-adjusted young people were far more likely to use social media as an extension of their positive friendships, while less socially adept youth either did not have Facebook or MySpace pages, or, if they did, were more likely to use these sites in less-than-positive ways," said U.Va. psychology professor Amori Yee Mikami, the study's lead author.

Mikami and her colleagues assessed the friendship quality and popularity of 172 13- to 14-year-olds, and then, eight years later, "friended" the study participants on their Facebook and MySpace pages to examine their interactions and friendship quality in those domains.

"It was like being a fly on the wall at a slumber party," Mikami said.

She found that the youths who were better adjusted in their early teens were more likely to use social media in their early 20s, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or parental income, and that, overall, the patterns of friendship quality and behavioral adjustment as early teens continued into early adulthood.

"We're finding that the interactions young adults are having on their Facebook and MySpace pages are more similar to than different from the interactions they have in their face-to-face relationships," Mikami said. "So parents of well-adjusted teens may have little to worry about regarding the way their children behave when using social media. It's likely to be similar positive behavior."

However, Mikami warns, teens with behavioral problems or who have difficulty maintaining positive friendships may be more likely to use social media sites in negative ways, just as they may behave negatively in their face-to-face relationships. Negative use of the sites would include using excessive profanity, making hostile remarks or aggressive gestures, or posting nude photographs of themselves or others. They also have fewer supportive relationships with their Facebook and MySpace friends. But this group also is less inclined to use social media at all.

Overall, 86 percent of the youths in Mikami's study used the social media Web sites, which parallels the national average, she said.

"Use of Facebook and MySpace is really pervasive among this age group, so it's understandable that young people would want to be connected with their peers in this way; it's an extension of the relationships they already share," Mikami said. "So parents should try to stay involved with their children and make an attempt to understand their online world in the same way they would want to understand any other aspect of their lives.

"The key as a parent is to be supportive rather than intrusive and to keep an open dialogue with your children so you can know what they are up to and who their friends are, both online and in person."

Treating Panic Disorder on the Web

An online treatment system for patients suffering with panic disorder and anxiety problems combine biofeedback therapy with web technologies and allows patients and medical professionals to communicate effectively, according to research published in the International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining.

Vincent Tseng and Bai-En Shie of the National Cheng Kung University are working with psychiatrist Fong-Lin Jang of the Chi-Mei Medical Center, in Tainan, Taiwan, to develop a system they say will have a "pivotal impact" on the healthcare industry.

The increasing pace of life, the industrialisation of society, and the advent of digital technology are all thought to underlie the growing prevalence of mental illness. Disorders, such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression are now diagnosed more frequently than ever before.

Panic disorders are not easily diagnosed but do represent chronic illness for countless patients and lead to hospitalisation with increasing frequency. Patients can become acutely fearful and uncomfortable and suffer dizziness, chest pain, difficulty breathing, a racing pulse, and even palpitations, all of which increase the sense of panic and mimic the symptoms of a heart attack or asthma episode, hence the emergency room admissions.

Sufferers often restrict their day to day activities to avoid inducing anxiety and the problem persists can lead to substance abuse and depression. Victims of panic disorder often have a poor quality of life overall.

The team has coupled a wireless-enabled finger-ring device that measures skin temperature with a web-enabled system. The system provides a convenient channel for communication between patients and healthcare worker as well as allowing hospital staff to allow patients to ask questions and download pertinent information.

The key to the system is that patients can also upload physiological data and their self-assessment to the database. The "emotion ring" continuously monitors and records the patient's finger skin temperature, which the researchers explain is a useful indicator of the patient's emotional state. It may simply provide a focus. Patients are then taught muscle and mental relaxation exercises and how to observe the effects of these on their skin temperature, thus providing a biofeedback mechanism that can also be monitored by their healthcare worker.

Temperature biofeedback has been utilized in medicine for more than three decades and because performance anxiety can occur during biofeedback a professional therapist must help the patient master the sensation of relaxation, especially in the initial stages of training.

The team has tested the system with ten patients in a pilot study. "Once the patients learned the cues for relaxation and the method to obtain rapid relaxation, they were able to apply the methods and cues to relieve the symptoms of panic disorder," they conclude. The next step is to develop a related system that works with mobile devices rather than a personal computer.

"After receiving the muscle relaxation program, patients could feel the difference between relaxation and tension, and learned the skill of relaxation," Tseng says, "The most important is that patients had fewer panic attacks and had improvement in Panic Disorder Severity Scale(PDSS). A large multi-center clinical trial with this system is going on in Taiwan."

Useless Online Student Quizzes

Online quizzes have been introduced to offset larger class sizes allowing students to self test and educators to evaluate student performance with reduced effort. However, Harm-Jan Steenhuis and Brian Grinder of the College of Business and Public Administration, at Eastern Washington University, Spokane and Erik Joost de Bruijn of the School of Management and Governance, at the University of Twente, in Enschede, The Netherlands have demonstrated that for students undertaking an operations management course, online quizzes are not as useful as some educators might think.

Information and communications technologies in the educational environment fall into two distinct categories. In the first, ICT is used for instructional purposes. In the second, for testing. In this latter category, online quizzes are increasingly popular as tools for testing student knowledge and skills and also as formative tools to help teachers mould the curriculum to fit the learning progress of the students. By adopting this latter approach, educators hope to improve student knowledge and grades.

However, Steenhuis and colleagues have found that this approach does not necessarily work and despite the fact that students perceive such quizzes as helpful, they may not be as useful to learning as both students and educators believe.

The team investigated the behavior and performance of students using online quizzes. They found that overall student grades were not improved by the formative online quizzes. Moreover, despite answer controls and time delays built into the quizzes that were meant to encourage additional study between attempts at the quiz, the students did not modify their behavior.

The study also answered one additional question: Do courses that use online quizzes perform better than courses without online quizzes?

By comparing exam results and final grades statistically the team found that there was no significant difference between the course that used online quizzes and the one that did not. "Our conclusion raises questions about the use of online quizzes as an effective course design element to improve student learning," the researchers say.

How to live your life twice

This is Professor Carlo Strenger of Tel Aviv University.

Elliot Jacques coined the term "mid-life crisis" 40 years ago, when the average lifespan was 70 and "mid-life" came at age 35. Individuals could expect their quality of life to decline from that point forward, Jacques argued, so some extreme reactions to encroaching mortality were to be expected, such as having extra-marital affairs and buying a Corvette. Not any more, says Prof. Carlo Strenger of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology. In an article co-authored with the Israeli researcher Arie Ruttenberg for the Harvard Business Review last year, and another in the journal Psychoanalytic Psychology, Prof. Strenger posits that the mid-life years are the best time of life to flourish and grow.

Citing research based on empirical evidence and studies from the field, Prof. Strenger says that adult lives really do have second acts.

"Somehow this line has been drawn around the mid and late 40s as the time for a mid-life crisis in our society," says Prof. Strenger. "But as people live longer and fuller lives, we have to cast aside that stereotype and start thinking in terms of 'mid-life transition' rather than 'mid-life crisis.'" He dismisses the prevailing myth that reaching the years between the 40s and the early 60s means adapting to diminished expectations, both internally and from society.

Thirty-five years of learning

"If you make fruitful use of what you've discovered about yourself in the first half of your life," Dr. Strenger argues, "the second half can be the most fulfilling."

Most people make many of their most important life decisions before they really know who they are, he says. By age 30, most Americans have already married, decided where to live, bought their first home, and chosen their career. "But at 30, people still have the better part of their adult years ahead of them," Prof. Strenger says.

The good news is that extended life expectancy, better health practices, education, and a greater emphasis on emotional self-awareness and personal fulfilment have reversed the chances that one will have a mid-life crisis. Neurological research has also disproved the notion that the brain deteriorates after 40. "A rich and fruitful life after 50 is a much more realistic possibility," he says.

Four tips to avoid a mid-life crisis

How can you transition smoothly through the best years of your life?

"First, and most important," Prof. Strenger suggests, "invest some sincere thought in the fact that you have more high-quality adult years ahead of you than behind you. Realize what that means in planning for the future."

Second, he says, think about what you've learned about yourself so far. Consider what you've found to be your strongest abilities and about the things that most please you, not what your parents or society expected of you when you were young.

Third, don't be afraid of daunting obstacles in making new changes. "Once you realize how much time you have left in this world, you will find it is profoundly worth it to invest energy in changing in major ways. A new career choice is not an unreasonable move, for example," Dr. Strenger advises. And you may now have a better chance of succeeding, because your choices will be based on knowledge and experience, rather than youthful blind ambition.

Finally, Prof. Strenger says it is absolutely necessary to make use of a support network. Individuals should discuss major life changes with their colleagues, friends and families. The people who know you best will best be able to support you in the new directions you want to take, he advises, and a professional therapist or counsellor can also be helpful.

Prof. Stenger's 2004 book on the subject is The Designed Self, published by The Analytic Press. His latest book, Critique of Global Unreason: Individuality and Meaning in the Global Age, will be published by Palgrave this year.

Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University

Scientists scramble to analyze Haiti quake

Teams work to understand and model what could happen next..


Since the ground shook Port-Au-Prince on January 12 and sent the city into chaos, scientists have been working to quickly assemble a detailed picture of a region in which scientific research had already been difficult to conduct.

“The question we are trying to address right now is if there could be other faults nearby or perhaps other portions of the fault to the east or west that could go,” says Eric Calais, a geophysicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who has used GPS stations to monitor the area since 2003.

At 4:53 p.m. local time on the day of the quake, a magnitude-7.0 temblor struck just 25 kilometers west-southwest of Port-Au-Prince, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The shallow quake occurred along the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault system, one of several major faults defining the boundary between the Caribbean and North America tectonic plates that move past each other in an east-west direction near Haiti. A section of fault approximately 50 kilometers long moved during the quake, says Gavin Hayes of the USGS National Earthquake Information Center. The largest amount the fault slipped was 4.5 meters.

The devastation has been extreme. Poor building construction and dense population have made what by seismic standards is a big but not a massive earthquake, into a major disaster. As of January 15, tens of thousands of people were reported dead.

Now scientists are bracing for what might happen next. “Our folks and others are acquiring all the imagery they can in order to examine possible landslide-dammed drainages that could create subsequent flash flood hazard, identify surface rupture and look for the extent of … ground failure,” says David Applegate, senior science adviser for natural hazards with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Haiti’s political situation had made it a difficult place to do science, Calais says. “A lot of researchers who otherwise would have liked to work in Haiti decided not to…. There is very little science infrastructure.”

Satellites are proving a key tool to understanding the recent earthquake. It will be some time before teams can do crucial field work on the ground, Applegate says. Other plans include close investigations of lifelines; hopes to deploy ocean-bottom seismometers nearby; and strategies for using satellite radar images taken before and after the quake as a way to determine degrees of deformation.

Though the planet is littered with some 4,000 seismic stations that constantly detect waves produced as the Earth’s crust moves and shifts, not one station is in Haiti, the scientists note.

For measuring the big quake, that’s not a problem. “Every sand grain on the planet dances to the music of those seismic waves,” says Ross Stein of the USGS in Menlo Park, Calif., who is part of a team working to quickly model the possible aftereffects of the January 12 quake. But, Hayes says, “there are no local stations in the immediate vicinity of the epicenter from which we can obtain data to help constrain very detailed characteristics,” he says, such as whether shaking was stronger, and damage even more severe, in some areas than others.

Seismic stations nearby, such as in the Dominican Republic, have allowed researchers to record and locate aftershocks as low as magnitude 3.0, Hayes says, but with a certain error.

Most aftershocks are smaller than the first rupture, and they become less frequent with time. But the strength of aftershocks doesn’t necessarily decrease with time, Stein says. “A small percentage of them can be larger than the main shock.” And a large aftershock could still hit a hundred days later, he says.

Researchers are hoping the quake won’t be a repeat of the 1999 Izmit earthquake and subsequent aftershocks, when a magnitude-7.6 on the North Anatolian fault system struck western Turkey and resulted in the deaths of at least 17,118 people, according to the USGS. Three months later, Stein says, an adjacent portion of the fault ruptured in a magnitude-7.0 quake.

The Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault system and North Anatolian fault system are similar, researchers say. Both are long faults, Stein says, with bumps and bends that can stop a rupture. When the rupture stops at those strong points, Calais adds, the change imparts large stresses that can make those areas of the fault more likely to experience quakes. That’s what happened on the North Anatolian in 1999. “One earthquake tends to trigger the next one within a few years or a couple of decades,” Calais says. “Hopefully this is not the case here.”

For the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault system, the early data from other Caribbean seismic stations show aftershocks defining a western limit to the portion of fault that slipped, Hayes says.

It wasn’t until 2003 that researchers were able to begin quantifying the movement along the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault system. Calais and fellow researchers began using portable GPS receivers to monitor the motion around the fault. In 2008, the team announced at a meeting of the Caribbean Geological Conference that the fault posed a major seismic hazard.

The team had measured plate motion of 7 millimeters a year, one-fifth of the motion along some portions of the San Andreas, which is a similar type of fault, Calais says. “The problem is the fault had been quiet for a long time.” The last major earthquake on the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault system was in 1770, historical accounts show. By January 12, a large amount of stress had built up along the fault, Calais says. “This is the way most faults behave on the planet. Most faults are quiet for a long time.”

The fault was behaving like most faults, but the quake hit a place unprepared for it. And also, Calais says, “it is only recently that we were able to quantify what’s going on there.… The progress we’ve been able to make has been too slow. The earthquake happened too early.”

Cell Phone Exposure May Protect Against and Reverse Alzheimer's Disease

The millions of people who spend hours every day on a cell phone may have a new excuse for yakking. A surprising new study in mice provides the first evidence that long-term exposure to electromagnetic waves associated with cell phone use may actually protect against, and even reverse, Alzheimer's disease. The study, led by University of South Florida researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC), was published January 6 in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
"It surprised us to find that cell phone exposure, begun in early adulthood, protects the memory of mice otherwise destined to develop Alzheimer's symptoms," said lead author Gary Arendash, PhD, USF Research Professor at the Florida ADRC. "It was even more astonishing that the electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones actually reversed memory impairment in old Alzheimer's mice."

The researchers showed that exposing old Alzheimer's mice to electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones erased brain deposits of the harmful protein beta-amyloid, in addition to preventing the protein's build-up in younger Alzheimer's mice. The sticky brain plaques formed by the abnormal accumulation of beta amyloid are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. Most treatments against Alzheimer's try to target beta-amyloid.

The highly-controlled study allowed researchers to isolate the effects of cell phone exposure on memory from other lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise. It involved 96 mice, most of which were genetically altered to develop beta-amyloid plaques and memory problems mimicking Alzheimer's disease as they aged. Some mice were non-demented, without any genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's, so researchers could test the effects of electromagnetic waves on normal memory as well.

Both the Alzheimer's and normal mice were exposed to the electromagnetic field generated by standard cell phone use for two 1-hour periods each day for seven to nine months. The mice didn't wear tiny headsets or have scientists holding cell phones up to their ears; instead, their cages were arranged around a centrally-located antenna generating the cell phone signal. Each animal was housed the same distance from the antenna and exposed to electromagnetic waves typically emitted by a cell phone pressed up against a human head.

If cell phone exposure was started when the genetically-programmed mice were young adults -- before signs of memory impairment were apparent -- their cognitive ability was protected. In fact, the Alzheimer's mice performed as well on tests measuring memory and thinking skills as aged mice without dementia. If older Alzheimer's mice already exhibiting memory problems were exposed to the electromagnetic waves, their memory impairment disappeared. Months of cell phone exposure even boosted the memories of normal mice to above-normal levels. The memory benefits of cell phone exposure took months to show up, suggesting that a similar effect in humans would take years if cell phone-level electromagnetic exposure was provided.

Based on their promising and unexpected findings in mice, the researchers concluded that electromagnetic field exposure could be an effective, non-invasive and drug-free way to prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease in humans. They are currently evaluating whether different sets of electromagnetic frequencies and strengths will produce more rapid and even greater cognitive benefits than those found in their current study.

"If we can determine the best set of electromagnetic parameters to effectively prevent beta-amyloid aggregation and remove pre-existing beta amyloid deposits from the brain, this technology could be quickly translated to human benefit against AD" said USF's Chuanhai Cao, PhD, the other major study author. "Since production and aggregation of β-amyloid occurs in traumatic brain injury, particularly in soldiers during war, the therapeutic impact of our findings may extend beyond Alzheimer's disease."

The memory test used to evaluate the effects of cell phone exposure in mice was closely designed from a sensitive test used to determine if Alzheimer's disease, or its very early signs (mild cognitive impairment), are present in humans. "Since we selected electromagnetic parameters that were identical to human cell phone use and tested mice in a task closely analogous to a human memory test, we believe our findings could have considerable relevance to humans," Arendash said.

The researchers found a slight increase in brain temperature during the two one-hour periods when mice were exposed to electromagnetic waves each day. This increase in brain temperature was seen only in the Alzheimer's mice, and only after months of exposure. The researchers suggest the increase in brain temperature helped the Alzheimer's brain to remove newly-formed beta-amyloid by causing brain cells to release it.

The researchers were particularly surprised to discover that months of cell phone exposure actually boosted the memory of non-demented (normal mice) to above-normal levels. They suspect that the main reason for this improvement involves the ability of electromagnetic exposure to increase brain activity, promoting greater blood flow and increased energy metabolism in the brain. "Our study provides evidence that long-term cell phone use is not harmful to brain," Dr. Cao said. "To the contrary, the electromagnetic waves emitted by cell phones could actually improve normal memory and be an effective therapy against memory impairment."

"It will take some time to determine the exact mechanisms involved in these beneficial memory effects," Arendash said. "One thing is clear, however -- the cognitive benefits of long-term electromagnetic exposure are real, because we saw them in both protection- and treatment-based experiments involving Alzheimer's mice, as well as in normal mice."

Previous human studies of electromagnetic waves from cell phones involved only brief exposures given to normal humans. While some studies reported small improvements in attention or memory (not enough to impact daily life), others reported no memory effects from short-term exposure. The new study by Arendash, Cao, and their colleagues is the first to investigate the effects of long-term electromagnetic exposure over many months on memory function in either humans or animals. The findings indicate that "long-term" exposure to cell phone level electromagnetic waves is needed to observe enhanced memory in normal or memory-impaired mice.

The USF researchers began investigating the effects of cell phone use on Alzheimer's disease several years ago, after several observational studies in humans linked a possible increased risk of Alzheimer's with "low-frequency" electromagnetic exposure -- like the energy waves generated by power and telephone lines. However, cell phones emit "high-frequency" electromagnetic waves, which are very different because they can have beneficial effects on brain cell function, such as increasing brain cell activity, Arendash said.

There has been recent controversy about whether electromagnetic waves from cell phones cause brain cancer. Some researchers argue that the risk of glioma (40 percent of all brain tumors) doubles after 10 or more years of cell phone use. However, others argue that since the overall lifetime risk of developing a brain tumor of any type is less than 1 percent, any doubling of this risk would still be very low. Groups such as the World Health Organization, the American Cancer Society, and the National Institutes of Health, have all concluded that scientific evidence to date does not support any adverse health effects associated with the use of cell phones. Consistent with the view of these organizations, the researchers found no autopsy evidence of abnormal growth in brains of the Alzheimer's mice following many months of exposure to cell phone-level electromagnetic waves. They also found all major peripheral organs, such as the liver and lungs, to be normal.

The research was conducted by an interdisciplinary group of neuroscientists, electrical engineers, and neurologists from universities in Japan and China as well as from the Florida ADRC at the University of South Florida. The study was supported by funds from the Florida ADRC, a statewide project sponsored by the National Institute on Aging, and the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Institute.

Science News: Artificial Blood Substitute

The Twilight book trilogy has 'vegetarian' vampires living on animal blood, and in the TV series True Blood, Japanese scientists have developed a synthetic blood substitute. However, in the most recent blockbuster movie Daybreakers, vampires suffer a horrific fate when attempting to drink their blood substitute.

Back in the real world, the hunt for a blood substitute could not be truer. In fact, the quest to create artificial blood is big business, with more than one billion pounds being spent over the last 20 years in an attempt to create a true alternative to blood.

Among those around the globe seeking a viable blood alternative are scientists at the University of Essex who have just submitted a worldwide patent for their engineered hemoglobin.

Over 75 million units of donated blood are given to people worldwide for use in hospitals. However, there are growing concerns about its use in routine operations.

A true blood substitute would be very useful as it could have a long shelf life, be stored away from hospitals, need not be matched for blood group and be guaranteed free of contamination by any present or future viruses.

The starting materials for blood substitutes have included chemicals used to help make atom bombs, cow blood and blood grown in bacteria. However, to date the world's scientists have failed to produce a safe alternative to blood. The real world is more Daybreakers than True Blood.

The reason for this failure, according to Professor Chris Cooper, a biochemist and blood substitute expert at the University of Essex, lies in hemoglobin, the red molecule inside blood cells that carries oxygen around the body. Outside the protective environment of the red cell, hemoglobin can be toxic.

Hemoglobin normally changes color from red to claret as it transfers oxygen around the body. However, when it is damaged the iron in hemoglobin is oxidized (like a car rusting) to produce dysfunctional brown and green products.

"Basically, hemoglobin produces free radicals that can damage the heart and kidneys," explained Professor Cooper. "The trick with artificial blood is to modify the molecule to be less toxic, but still perform the vital role of carrying oxygen around the body. No one has managed this yet."

What makes Professor Cooper's group engineered hemoglobin so special is that it is less toxic.

Daybreakers envisages a race against time to produce an artificial blood substitute to save vampires and the human race from extinction. In the world of science, the consequences are not so dramatic, but the race is well and truly on.

Professor Cooper's work on blood substitutes is funded by UK government research councils in Biotechnology and Biological Sciences (BBSRC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences (EPSRC).

TV shortens your life span, study finds

Television viewing has often been accused of rotting the human brain, but it seems the real risk may be that it is doing some damage to the rest of your body.

Australian scientists have published research showing a link which suggests that the more TV a person watches, the sooner they die.

The report, which appears in the journal Circulation,says every extra hour spent watching television increases people's risk of premature death.

Professor David Dunstan of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, followed more than 8000 Australian adults for six years.

The team discovered that the people who watched the most TV died younger.

"What this study provides is the first compelling evidence linking television viewing to an increased risk of early death," says Dunstan.

"People who watch four or more hours of television a day have a 46% higher risk of death from all causes and 80% increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease."

Dunstan says the increased risk of premature death was independent of other risk factors like smoking, blood pressure, cholesterol, diet or exercise.

He says that shows too much sitting is bad for our health.

"[Watching TV involves] prolonged sitting, because that's the default position, and from that there's an absence of muscle movement," he says.

"We know from extensive evidence that muscle contractions are so important for many of the body's regulatory processes, such as breaking down and using glucose, so that loss of muscle movement for prolonged periods may result in a disruption to the body's regulatory processes."

Sitting down

The report stresses that sitting too much is different from not exercising enough.

"The risk associated with prolonged sitting are also not necessarily offset by doing more exercise," says Dunstan.

"Because in this study even people who were exercising, if they also watched high amounts of television, they had an increased risk of premature death."

Dunstan says the team also has preliminary evidence indicating that nearly three-quarters of the working hours of office-based employees are spent sitting down.

Trevor Shilton from the Heart Foundation says the research highlights a vitally important new field of study.

"In just a couple of generations we've gone from being a very active people to people who sit around for most of the day," he says

"I can foresee a time where we will have, in addition to our guidelines, a defined 30 minutes of physical activity, also guidelines about moving more and standing more throughout the day.

"And about sitting less, standing up every 20 minutes, going for a walk at work, having rules around television and computer times for our kids."