Clues to Pregnancy-Associated Breast Cancer Found

Expression of inflammatory-related genes in breast tissue of women who have previously given birth may explain the aggressiveness and frequency of pregnancy-associated breast cancer, according to new research at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Pregnancy at a relatively young age reduces the risk of breast cancer over the long term, but epidemiological studies have found that women are at an increased risk for breast cancer during pregnancy and for up to 10 years after giving birth, said Debra Tonetti, associate professor of pharmacology and lead researcher on the study. These pregnancy-associated breast cancers also carry an unusually high risk of spreading to nearby organs and for lethality as compared to breast cancers in women who have never been pregnant, she said.

Tonetti and her research team examined the level of expression of 64 genes in tissue from benign breast biopsies and breast-reduction surgeries at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago. The women, who were between the ages of 18 and 45, were divided into three categories: those who had never been pregnant, those who had been pregnant within the past two years, and those who had been pregnant five to 10 years previously.

The set of examined genes included genes known to be related to immunity and inflammation, extracellular matrix remodeling, angiogenesis (the growth of new blood vessels vital to wound healing) or hormone signaling.

Twenty-two percent of the examined genes showed significant difference in expression in the breast tissue of women who had never given birth compared with those who had. Inflammation-related genes, as a class, were more active in women who had borne a child. Involution -- the process by which the breast returns to normal following lactation -- could be a cause of the inflammation, she said.

"Our results showed an increase in immune/inflammatory activity in the post-pregnant breast," Tonetti said. "Interestingly, this response was not limited to the recently pregnant group, but also characterized more distant pregnancies as well."

A surprising finding was evidence of a protective effect of pregnancy as well, since the expression of many hormone and growth factor signaling genes suggests protection. These findings indicate that a balance between high risk inflammatory and protective hormone signaling gene expression may ultimately determine a woman's individual breast cancer risk, she said.

The researchers were not only interested in determining whether pregnancy and involution are associated with gene expression changes in the normal breast, but whether such changes stay for a short period of time or are permanent, Tonetti said.

The study is among the first to use samples from normal breast tissue to determine whether there is a time-dependent effect on breast cancer risk, she said.

The results will help understand the mechanisms behind pregnancy-associated breast cancer and will indicate potentially effective prevention strategies for women at high risk, such as use of anti-inflammatory agents. In addition, more effective therapeutic approaches may be developed based on the specific molecular pathways involved, Tonetti said.

The findings are published in the March issue of the journal Cancer Prevention Research. The study was funded through a grant from Avon Products Foundation.

Other authors, all from UIC, include Szilard Asztalos and Megan Hayes of the department of biopharmaceutical sciences; Peter Gann, Larisa Nonn and Elizabeth Wiley of the department of pathology; Craig Beam of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics; and Yang Dai of the department of bioengineering.

Cocaine-Related Deaths Rise in Warm Weather, Study Finds

In a study published online in the journal Addiction, researchers in the United States have discovered that accidental overdose deaths involving cocaine rise when the average weekly ambient temperature passes 24 degrees Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit).

Using mortality data from New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for 1990 through 2006, and temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, researchers found that accidental overdose deaths that were wholly or partly attributable to cocaine use rose significantly as the weekly ambient temperature passed 24 degrees Celsius. The number of cocaine-related overdose deaths continued to rise as temperatures continued to climb.

Cocaine-related overdose deaths increase as the ambient temperature rises because cocaine increases the core body temperature, impairs the cardiovascular system's ability to cool the body, and decreases the sense of heat-related discomfort that ordinarily motivates people to avoid becoming overheated. Cocaine users who become overheated (hyperthermic) can overdose on lower amounts of cocaine because their bodies are under more stress.

The study's findings correct previous research that associated an increase in cocaine-related mortality with much higher temperatures (31.1 degrees Celsius, or 87.9 degrees Fahrenheit). Because cocaine-related overdose fatalities begin to rise at lower ambient temperatures than was previously thought, it is now apparent that cocaine users are at risk for longer periods of each year. Between 1990 and 2006, the average weekly temperature in New York City rose above 24 degrees Celsius for about seven weeks per year.

The study showed no difference in the number of drug overdoses in New York City among those weeks where the average temperature was between -10 and 24 degrees Celsius. Above 24 degrees Celsius, however, there were 0.25 more drug overdoses per 1,000,000 residents per week for every two degrees increase in weekly average temperature. Given that over 8.2 million people live in New York City, the study's findings predict that at least two more people per week will die of a drug overdose in the city for each two degree rise in temperature above 24 degrees Celsius, compared to weeks with average temperatures of 24 degrees and below.

The authors of this study point out the need for public health interventions in warm weather, such as delivering health-related warnings to high-risk groups. Prevention efforts could also include making air conditioning available in locations where cocaine use is common such as urban areas with a known high prevalence of cocaine use, and within those urban areas, particular neighbourhoods with elevated numbers of cocaine-related deaths or arrests. As lead author Dr. Amy Bohnert explains, "Cocaine users are at a high risk for a number of negative health outcomes and need public health attention, particularly when the weather is warm."

Infectious Virus Hidden in Chromosomes Can Be Passed from Parents to Children

Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) infects nearly 100 percent of humans in early childhood, and the infection then lasts for the rest of a person's life. Now, a team led by Peter Medveczky, MD, a professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of South Florida (USF), has discovered that in some individuals, HHV-6 causes such a permanent infection by inserting or "integrating" its DNA into human chromosomes. From this harbor, the viral DNA cannot be eliminated by the immune system.

The paper describing this research was published online March 8 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The USF team also confirmed preliminary results by other investigators that, a long time ago, the virus inserted its DNA into the DNA of human sperm and egg cells. As a result, some people (about 1 percent of people in the U.S.) are born with the virus's DNA in every cell in their body. Indeed, HHV-6 is the first functional virus of any type reported to be passed through the human germ line.

The team presented clear evidence that the virus can insert its DNA specifically into telomeres -- structures at the ends of each chromosome that play key roles in both aging and cancer.

Finally, the team showed that the chromosomally integrated HHV-6 (CIHHV-6) genomes can be reactivated to an infectious form.

The findings are a surprise, since other human herpesviruses cause permanent infection by a different mechanism. The round up their DNA into a little circle that resides inside the nucleus of the cell: they do not insert their DNA into the chromosomes.

There are many unanswered questions that the USF team hopes to sort out. "We would like to know whether the location of the integration has an impact on pathology," Dr. Medveczky said. "We'd also like to know more about which drugs can provoke reactivation in patients that carry this virus in every cell... It would be important for these patients to avoid drugs that may reactivate the virus."

"This is an exciting and provocative series of observations. The questions raised by this work will keep herpes virologists busy for years," predicted HHV-6 expert Phil Pellett, PhD of Wayne State University.

HHV-6 was discovered in 1986 in the laboratory of Dr. Robert C. Gallo at the National Cancer Institute after Gallo asked his co-workers to look for a herpesvirus in AIDS lymphoma cases that might be triggering cancer. "In my mind these findings also should stimulate further studies on a possible role of HHV-6 in some cancers as suggested by others who have found a possible link to some lymphomas," Dr. Gallo commented. "However, clearly more work will be needed to advance any conclusion in this regard."

HHV-6 causes roseola, a generally benign rash and fever in infants. The virus can reactivate in individuals with suppressed immune systems, sometimes causing serious consequences such as encephalitis, hepatitis, myocarditis, and pneumonia.

Recent research has suggested that HHV-6 may also be associated with diseases in people with apparently healthy immune systems: encephalitis, mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, myocarditis, and idiopathic cardiomyopathy. While there is no proof that the virus plays a causal role in these diseases, the virus has been found more often in the diseased tissue than in healthy tissue.

Previous studies had used a visual technique called fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), which showed that the viral DNA was present at the same location (near the telomeres) of the same chromosome in both parent and child. This strongly suggested but did not prove that the virus was inherited through the germ line in these children. By determining the DNA sequence of the ends of the chromosome, the Medveczky team clearly demonstrated that the HHV-6 genome was integrated into telomere DNA. The team also showed that HHV-6 DNA, unlike other human herpesviruses, does not curl into a circle inside the nucleus.

The great majority of people, however, do not inherit HHV-6 DNA from their parents and do not have it in every cell of their body. Yet nearly everyone becomes permanently infected with the virus. So Medveczky and colleagues wondered if the virus might take up permanent residence in the body by integrating its DNA into the chromosomes of just some cells.

To examine this possibility, the investigators took cells that had never been exposed to HHV-6 and infected them with HHV-6 that had been engineered to make infected cells glow bright green. Sure enough, once the infection died down, the green cells contained HHV-6 DNA integrated into the ends of the chromosomes. When the investigators stimulated the cells with chemicals known to activate other herpesviruses, cells with integrated viral DNA began producing infectious virus. It will be important to learn whether a similar process occurs during the form of HHV-6 infection that occurs in most individuals.

For the approximately 1 percent of the population born with viral DNA in every cell in their body, several questions arise. Are such people more prone to diseases because they have a greater risk of viral reactivation? If so, which diseases? If a person is born with viral proteins present from birth, would that person's immune system be "fooled" into thinking that the virus was not foreign and need not be attacked? If so, is that a bad thing or a good thing for a person's health? Finally, the virus inserts itself into the telomeres and could theoretically disrupt the function of the telomeres. Since the telomeres are important in cellular aging and in cancer, could the insertion of viral DNA in the telomeres have any effect on a cell's tendency to age or to turn cancerous?

While unique among known human herpesviruses, the capacity of HHV-6 to integrate into human chromosomes is not unique in nature. A herpesvirus that infects chickens, called Marek's disease virus, appears to behave the same way. Interestingly, although the viruses are not otherwise closely related, the DNA sequence used by Marek's disease virus to integrate into chicken chromosomes is remarkably similar to the DNA sequence used for chromosomal integration by HHV-6.

Doctoral student Jesse Arbuckle and research associate Maria Medveczky, both of the USF Department of Molecular Medicine, were lead authors of the study. Other contributing authors were from Bioworld Consulting Laboratories, the HHV-6 Foundation, University of Minnesota, University of Brussels, Stanford University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School.

The USF study was funded by the HHV-6 Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports virology research, as well as by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Asteroid Killed Off the Dinosaurs, Says International Scientific Panel

The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, which wiped out the dinosaurs and more than half of species on Earth, was caused by an asteroid colliding with Earth and not massive volcanic activity, according to a comprehensive review of all the available evidence, published in the journal Science.

A panel of 41 international experts, including UK researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge, University College London and the Open University, reviewed 20 years' worth of research to determine the cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which happened around 65 million years ago. The extinction wiped out more than half of all species on the planet, including the dinosaurs, bird-like pterosaurs and large marine reptiles, clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth.

The new review of the evidence shows that the extinction was caused by a massive asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub (pronounced chick-shoo-loob) in Mexico. The asteroid, which was around 15 kilometres wide, is believed to have hit Earth with a force one billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. It would have blasted material at high velocity into the atmosphere, triggering a chain of events that caused a global winter, wiping out much of life on Earth in a matter of days.

Scientists have previously argued about whether the extinction was caused by the asteroid or by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in India, where there were a series of super volcanic eruptions that lasted approximately 1.5 million years. These eruptions spewed 1,100,000 km3 of basalt lava across the Deccan Traps, which would have been enough to fill the Black Sea twice, and were thought to have caused a cooling of the atmosphere and acid rain on a global scale.

In the new study, scientists analysed the work of palaeontologists, geochemists, climate modellers, geophysicists and sedimentologists who have been collecting evidence about the KT extinction over the last 20 years. Geological records show that the event that triggered the extinction destroyed marine and land ecosystems rapidly, according to the researchers, who conclude that the Chicxulub asteroid impact is the only plausible explanation for this.

Despite evidence for relatively active volcanism in Deccan Traps at the time, marine and land ecosystems showed only minor changes within the 500,000 years before the time of the KT extinction. Furthermore, computer models and observational data suggest that the release of gases such as sulphur into the atmosphere after each volcanic eruption in the Deccan Traps would have had a short lived effect on the planet. These would not cause enough damage to create a rapid mass extinction of land and marine species.

Dr Joanna Morgan, co-author of the review from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, said: "We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis. However, the final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs happened when blasted material was ejected at high velocity into the atmosphere. This shrouded the planet in darkness and caused a global winter, killing off many species that couldn't adapt to this hellish environment."

Dr Gareth Collins, Natural Environment Research Council Fellow and another co-author from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, added: "The asteroid was about the size of the Isle of Wight and hit Earth 20 times faster than a speeding bullet. The explosion of hot rock and gas would have looked like a huge ball of fire on the horizon, grilling any living creature in the immediate vicinity that couldn't find shelter. Ironically, while this hellish day signalled the end of the 160 million year reign of the dinosaurs, it turned out to be a great day for mammals, who had lived in the shadow of the dinosaurs prior to this event. The KT extinction was a pivotal moment in Earth's history, which ultimately paved the way for humans to become the dominant species on Earth."

In the review, the panel sifted through past studies to analyse the evidence that linked the asteroid impact and volcanic activity with the KT extinction. One key piece of evidence was the abundance of iridium in geological samples around the world from the time of the extinction. Iridium is very rare in Earth's crust and very common in asteroids. Immediately after the iridium layer, there is a dramatic decline in fossil abundance and species, indicating that the KT extinction followed very soon after the asteroid hit.

Another direct link between the asteroid impact and the extinction is evidence of 'shocked' quartz in geological records. Quartz is shocked when hit very quickly by a massive force and these minerals are only found at nuclear explosion sites and at meteorite impacts sites. The team say that an abundance of shocked quartz in rock layers all around the world at the KT boundary lends further weight to their conclusions that a massive meteorite impact happened at the time of the mass extinction.

The panel was able to discount previous studies that suggested that the Chicxulub impact occurred 300,000 years prior to the KT extinction. The researchers say that these studies had misinterpreted geological data that was gathered close to the Chicxulub impact site. This is because the rocks close to the impact zone underwent complex geological processes after the initial asteroid collision, which made it difficult to interpret the data correctly.

Choking Is a Leading Cause of Injury and Death Among Children

 

Choking is a leading cause of injury and death among children, especially those younger than 4 years of age. The majority of choking-related incidents among children are associated with food, coins and toys. A new policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), led by a doctor at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and published in the February 22 online issue of Pediatrics, takes a closer look at preventing choking among children.

On average, a child will die every 5 days in the United States from choking on food. However, too little attention is paid by government agencies and food manufacturers to minimizing choking risks. Although some food manufacturers voluntarily place warning labels on high risk products, more work needs to be done to implement safety standards for all high risk foods in regard to choking.

“We have laws and regulations in this country that require warning labels to be placed on toys that pose choking hazards, and we have systems that monitor and recall consumer products that pose a risk,” said the policy’s lead author Gary Smith, MD, DrPH, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “However, there are no such regulations on high risk foods - and children are much more likely to put food in their mouths than a toy.”

According to the policy statement, the AAP recommends:

• Warning labels on foods that pose a high choking risk
• A recall of food products that pose a significant choking hazard
• The establishment of a nationwide food-related choking-incident surveillance and reporting system
• A commitment from food manufacturers to design new food and redesign existing food to minimize choking risk, to the extent possible

Parents and caregivers should also be made aware of foods that could be choking hazards. The risk of choking depends on the shape, size and consistency of the item, along with the developmental and behavioral capabilities of the child. Many foods that are thought to be “kid friendly” are actually dangerous. Foods like grapes, popcorn and nuts can easily become lodged in a young child’s throat or lungs. Hot dogs pose the greatest risk, as they cause more choking deaths than any other food.

“If you were to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, you couldn’t do much better than a hot dog,” said Dr. Smith, also a Professor of Pediatrics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. “It will wedge itself in tightly and completely block the airway, causing the child to die within minutes because of lack of oxygen.”

In order to reduce the risk of choking, parents and caregivers can do their part by following these safety tips:

• Do not give children younger than 4 any round, firm foods unless they have been cut into very small pieces. Cut hot dogs lengthwise and cut grapes into quarters. This changes the dangerous round shape that can block a young child’s throat.
• Do not give toddlers other high risk foods, such as hard candy, nuts, seeds and raw carrots.
• Never let small children run, play or lie down while eating.
• Keep coins and other small items out of reach of young children at all times.
• Carefully read warning labels on toys before giving them to young children.
• To check if a part of a toy is too small, use a small parts test device, which is available at many toy stores.
• Additionally, parents and caregivers should learn first aid for choking and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the event a choking episode occurs.

Internal and Environmental Factors Trigger Unique Brain Activity in Teens

 

While the otherworldly behavior of teenagers is well documented, University of Pittsburgh researchers have taken a significant step toward finally unraveling the actual brain activity that can drive adolescents to engage in impulsive, self-indulgent, or self-destructive behavior. Published in the current edition of Behavioral Neuroscience, the Pitt study demonstrates that adolescent brains are more sensitive to internal and environmental factors than adult brains and suggests that the teenage tendency to experiment with drugs and develop psychological disorders could stem from this susceptibility.

Lead researcher Bita Moghaddam, a professor in the Department of Neuroscience in Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences, said that although the exact mechanics of the adolescent brain's reaction need further investigation, the current study is a starting point in mapping the neural path from stimuli to behavior in the adolescent brain. Pitt neuroscience doctoral student David Sturman was the Behavioral Neuroscience report's lead author, conducting the study with Moghaddam and Pitt research assistant Daniel Mandell. The project was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.

"Adolescence is a period of volatility and vulnerability with tendencies toward interpersonal conflict, emotional reactivity, and risk behavior, but we know very little about the brain mechanisms that promote this state," Moghaddam said. "We want to know how the adolescent brain interacts with the environment at the brain-cell level, when the neural signals are firing. Once we identify how certain factors trigger teenage behavior, we might better understand-and possibly address-the origin of the risk taking and psychological disorders such as depression and schizophrenia that occur during this period."

The researchers trained adolescent and adult rats to respond to a visual light cue by rewarding them with sugar pellets. Previous research has shown that adolescent rats and mice exhibit behavioral differences from adults similar to those of adolescent humans, including greater impulsiveness, impatience, and vulnerability to psychological problems, the authors wrote. The rats were placed in front of three holes with the light behind the middle hole. If a rat poked its nose into the center hole when the light was activated, it received a pellet; if it explored the right or left hole, it got nothing. The researchers found that the adolescents responded to the light cue at least as readily as adult rats, suggesting a similar or slightly better capacity for learning.

After six days, the rats no longer received a reward for choosing the center hole. They were divided into four test groups, each with an equal number of adults and adolescents: rats that were given 20 percent less food between sessions and received the light cue; rats that received the light cue but could eat as much as they liked between sessions; a group that received less food and no light cue; and a group that could eat between sessions but was not shown the light cue during the experiments.

Moghaddam and her team found that adolescents tended to return to the center hole far more often than the adults although they received no reward and continued going to the hole long after the adult rats stopped altogether. Such doggedness was even more prominent in adolescents who received the light cue and had a restricted diet before the experiment. This group nosed the center hole 30 times, twice as often as adults under the same circumstances and as adolescents with less food and no light cue. Adolescents that received the cue and had free access to food made for the center hole only a third as often.

Thus, rats experiencing internal and external stimuli-hunger and the light cue-compulsively sought the earlier reward long after the other rats realized it no longer existed. These results suggest that human teenagers can similarly behave irrationally and compulsively when faced with certain feelings and settings, Moghaddam said. "A scenario could range from the relatively mundane, such as hungry teenagers being more likely than adults to buy fast food immediately after seeing an advertisement, to despair and relationship problems eliciting thoughts of suicide," she said.

For the project's next phase, the Pitt group will repeat the experiments while monitoring activity in the emotion and cognition centers of the adolescent and adult rats' brains, Moghaddam said. This information will help Moghaddam and her colleagues grasp how brain cells encode the behavioral signals sent in response to stimuli.

Midday Nap Markedly Boosts the Brain's Learning Capacity

 

If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.

 

Conversely, the more hours we spend awake, the more sluggish our minds become, according to the findings. The results support previous data from the same research team that pulling an all-nighter -- a common practice at college during midterms and finals -- decreases the ability to cram in new facts by nearly 40 percent, due to a shutdown of brain regions during sleep deprivation.

"Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap," said Matthew Walker, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the lead investigator of these studies.

In the recent UC Berkeley sleep study, 39 healthy young adults were divided into two groups -- nap and no-nap. At noon, all the participants were subjected to a rigorous learning task intended to tax the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helps store fact-based memories. Both groups performed at comparable levels.

At 2 p.m., the nap group took a 90-minute siesta while the no-nap group stayed awake. Later that day, at 6 p.m., participants performed a new round of learning exercises. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. In contrast, those who napped did markedly better and actually improved in their capacity to learn.

These findings reinforce the researchers' hypothesis that sleep is needed to clear the brain's short-term memory storage and make room for new information, said Walker, who presented his preliminary findings on Feb. 21, at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego, Calif.

Since 2007, Walker and other sleep researchers have established that fact-based memories are temporarily stored in the hippocampus before being sent to the brain's prefrontal cortex, which may have more storage space.

"It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you're not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder," Walker said.

In the latest study, Walker and his team have broken new ground in discovering that this memory- refreshing process occurs when nappers are engaged in a specific stage of sleep. Electroencephalogram tests, which measure electrical activity in the brain, indicated that this refreshing of memory capacity is related to Stage 2 non-REM sleep, which takes place between deep sleep (non-REM) and the dream state known as Rapid Eye Movement (REM). Previously, the purpose of this stage was unclear, but the new results offer evidence as to why humans spend at least half their sleeping hours in Stage 2, non-REM, Walker said.

"I can't imagine Mother Nature would have us spend 50 percent of the night going from one sleep stage to another for no reason," Walker said. "Sleep is sophisticated. It acts locally to give us what we need."

Walker and his team will go on to investigate whether the reduction of sleep experienced by people as they get older is related to the documented decrease in our ability to learn as we age. Finding that link may be helpful in understanding such neurodegenerative conditions as Alzheimer's disease, Walker said.

In addition to Walker, co-investigators of these new findings are UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow Bryce A. Mander and psychology undergraduate Sangeetha Santhanam.

 

Youngest Extra-Solar Planet Discovered Around Solar-Type Star

 

Astronomers have discovered the youngest extra-solar planet around a solar-type star, named BD+20 1790b.

 

The giant planet, six-times the mass of Jupiter, is only 35 million years old. It orbits a young active central star at a distance closer than Mercury orbits the Sun. Young stars are usually excluded from planet searches because they have intense magnetic fields that generate a range of phenomena known collectively as stellar activity, including flares and spots. This activity can mimic the presence of a companion and so can make extremely difficult to disentangle the signals of planets and activity.

University of Hertfordshire astronomers, Dr Maria Cruz Gálvez-Ortiz and Dr John Barnes, are part of the international collaboration that made the discovery.

Dr Maria Cruz Gálvez-Ortiz, describing how the planet was discovered, said: "The planet was detected by searching for very small variations in the velocity of the host star, caused by the gravitational tug of the planet as it orbits -- the so-called 'Doppler wobble technique.' Overcoming the interference caused by the activity was a major challenge for the team, but with enough data from an array of large telescopes the planet's signature was revealed."

There is currently a severe lack of knowledge about early stages of planet evolution. Most planet-search surveys tend to target much older stars, with ages in excess of a billion years. Only one young planet, with an age of 100 million years, was previously known. However, at only 35 million years, BD+20 1790b is approximately three times younger. The detection of young planets will allow the testing of formation scenarios and to investigate the early stages of planetary evolution.

BD+20 1790b was discovered using observations made at different telescopes, including the Observatorio de Calar Alto (Almería, Spain) and the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (La Palma, Spain) over the last five years. The discovery team is an international collaboration including: M.M. Hernán Obispo, E. De Castro and M. Cornide (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), M.C. Gálvez-Ortiz and J.R. Barnes, (University of Hertfordshire, U.K.), G. Anglada-Escudé (Carnegie Institution of Washington, USA) and S.R. Kane (NASA Exoplanet Institute, Caltech, USA).

The discovery has just been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

 

Walking Linked to Eased Osteoarthritis, Study Suggests

 

 "Progressive walking" combined with glucosamine sulphate supplementation has been shown to improve the symptoms of osteoarthritis. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open-access journal Arthritis Research and Therapy found that patients who walked at least two bouts of 1500 steps each on three days of the week reported significantly less arthritis pain, and significantly improved physical function.

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Dr Kristiann Heesch worked with a team of researchers from The University of Queensland, Australia, to carry out the trial in 36 osteoarthritis patients (aged 42-73 years). All patients received the dietary supplement for six weeks, after which they continued to take the supplement during a 12-week progressive walking program. The program, called Stepping Out, includes a walking guide; a pedometer; weekly log sheets and a weekly planner, all intended to help patients adopt the exercise regime.

Seventeen patients were randomly assigned to walk five days per week, while the remaining 19 were instructed to walk three days a week.

The team found that both groups achieved significant improvement in their symptoms, however being encouraged to walk five days a week was notmore effective than being encouraged to walk three days. "These findings are not surprising given that the three-day and five-day walking groups did not differ significantly in the mean number of days actually walked per week, the mean number of daily steps walked, nor their weekly minutes of physical activity," Dr Heesch said. "They provide preliminary evidence that osteoarthritis sufferers can benefit from a combination of glucosamine sulphate and walking 3000 steps per day for exercise, in bouts of at least 1500 steps each, on at least three days per week."

This amount of walking is less than current physical activity recommendations for the general population, but follows the recommendations for people with arthritis.

Drama or Reality TV: Do Medical Shows Depict Proper First Aid for Seizures?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100214220102.htm

 

Watching TV medical shows might not be the best way to learn what to do when someone has a seizure. Researchers screened the most popular medical dramas and found that doctors and nurses on the shows responded inappropriately to seizures almost half the time, according to a study that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto April 10 to April 17, 2010.

 

"Television dramas are a potentially powerful method of educating the public about first aid and seizures," said study author Andrew Moeller, with Dalhousie University, Halifax, in Nova Scotia, Canada. "Our results, showing that television shows inaccurately showed seizure management half the time, are a call to action. People with epilepsy should lobby the television industry to adhere to guidelines for first aid management of seizures." Moeller worked alongside R. Mark Sadler, MD, also with Dalhousie University for the research.

For the study, researchers screened all episodes of the highest-rated US medical dramas: "Grey's Anatomy," "House, M.D.," and "Private Practice" and the last five seasons of "ER" for seizures. In the 327 episodes, 59 seizures occurred. Fifty-one seizures took place in a hospital. Nearly all first aid was performed by "nurses" or "doctors."

Guidelines on seizure management were used to determine whether the seizure was handled properly.

The study found that inappropriate practices, including holding the person down, trying to stop involuntary movements or putting something in the person's mouth, occurred in 25 cases, nearly 46 percent of the time. First aid management was shown appropriately in 17 seizures, or about 29 percent of the time. Appropriateness of first aid could not be determined in 15 incidents of seizures, or 25 percent.

Long-Distance Migration Shapes Butterfly Wings

A University of Georgia study has found that monarch butterflies that migrate long distances have evolved significantly larger and more elongated wings than their stationary cousins, differences that are consistent with traits known to enhance flight ability in other migratory species.

As part of a National Science Foundation and UGA-funded study, researchers in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources and the Odum School of Ecology examined the size and shape of monarchs from migratory and non-migratory populations using sophisticated computer imaging that was able to measure precise details about the insects' wings. Warnell doctoral candidate Andy Davis and Odum Associate Professor Sonia Altizer compared migratory monarchs from the eastern and western U.S. to those in Hawaii, Costa Rica, South Florida and Puerto Rico that do not migrate. They also measured the wings of lab-grown monarchs to rule out environmental causes of differences in size and shape, and to demonstrate a genetic basis for variation in wing traits among individual monarchs. Altizer and Davis' findings were recently published in the online edition of the scientific journal Evolution.

The findings in monarchs were consistent with previous studies comparing migratory and non-migratory bird species, which indicate that the best shape for long-distance flight involves long wings with a narrow tip to help reduce drag. In addition to their findings on wing size and shape, the team also found that monarchs from the two migratory populations in the U.S. differed in body size, suggesting that each population could have adapted to the demands of migration in subtly different ways. Larger bodies might help eastern monarchs, with their much longer migration, carry fat deposits to fuel the long journey and five-month overwintering period in Mexico.

Monarchs in eastern North America, famous for migrating the longest distances of any insect species in the world, face a number of threats, to the point that monarch migration is considered to be an "endangered phenomenon." Davis has published previous research indicating that female monarch butterflies are on a 30-year decline in the eastern U.S., a troubling pattern that paints a dire picture for population recruitment. Furthermore, monarchs from this population are prone to periodic population crashes from storms at the Mexican overwintering site. Although monarchs worldwide are not threatened, Altizer said, those with the larger wingspan are. "Our study shows that we would lose an evolutionarily unique population if the migration of eastern monarchs were to unravel," she said.

How The Moon Produces Its Own Water

The Moon is a big sponge that absorbs electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. These particles interact with the oxygen present in some dust grains on the lunar surface, producing water. This discovery, made by the ESA-ISRO instrument SARA onboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, confirms how water is likely being created on the lunar surface.

It also gives scientists an ingenious new way to take images of the Moon and any other airless body in the Solar System.

The lunar surface is a loose collection of irregular dust grains, known as regolith. Incoming particles should be trapped in the spaces between the grains and absorbed. When this happens to protons they are expected to interact with the oxygen in the lunar regolith to produce hydroxyl and water. The signature for these molecules was recently found and reported by Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument team.

The SARA results confirm that solar hydrogen nuclei are indeed being absorbed by the lunar regolith but also highlight a mystery: not every proton is absorbed. One out of every five rebounds into space. In the process, the proton joins with an electron to become an atom of hydrogen. “We didn’t expect to see this at all,” says Stas Barabash, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, who is the European Principal Investigator for the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA) instrument, which made the discovery.

Although Barabash and his colleagues do not know what is causing the reflections, the discovery paves the way for a new type of image to be made. The hydrogen shoots off with speeds of around 200 km/s and escapes without being deflected by the Moon’s weak gravity. Hydrogen is also electrically neutral, and is not diverted by the magnetic fields in space. So the atoms fly in straight lines, just like photons of light. In principle, each atom can be traced back to its origin and an image of the surface can be made. The areas that emit most hydrogen will show up the brightest.

Whilst the Moon does not generate a global magnetic field, some lunar rocks are magnetised. Barabash and his team are currently making images, to look for such ‘magnetic anomalies’ in lunar rocks. These generate magnetic bubbles that deflect incoming protons away into surrounding regions making magnetic rocks appear dark in a hydrogen image.

The incoming protons are part of the solar wind, a constant stream of particles given off by the Sun. They collide with every celestial object in the Solar System but are usually stopped by the body’s atmosphere. On bodies without such a natural shield, for example asteroids or the planet Mercury, the solar wind reaches the ground. The SARA team expects that these objects too will reflect many of the incoming protons back into space as hydrogen atoms.

This knowledge provides timely advice for the scientists and engineers who are readying ESA’s BepiColombo mission to Mercury. The spacecraft will be carrying two similar instruments to SARA and may find that the inner-most planet is reflecting more hydrogen than the Moon because the solar wind is more concentrated closer to the Sun.

SARA was one of three instruments that ESA contributed to Chandrayaan-1, the lunar orbiter that finished its mission in August 2009. The instrument was built jointly by scientific groups from Sweden, India, Japan, and Switzerland: Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden; Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Trivandrum, India; University of Bern, Switzerland; and Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Sagamihara, Japan. The instrument is led by Principal Investigators Stanislav Barabash, IRF, Sweden, and Anil Bhardwaj, VSSC, India.

Moms Influence How Children Develop Advanced Cognitive Functions

Executive functioning is a set of advanced cognitive functions -- such as the ability to control impulses, remember things, and show mental flexibility -- that help us plan and monitor what we do to reach goals. Although executive functioning develops speedily between ages 1 and 6, children vary widely in their skills in this area. Now a new longitudinal study tells us that moms play a role in how their children develop these abilities.

The study was conducted at the University of Montreal and the University of Minnesota. It appears in the January/February 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.

The researchers looked at 80 pairs of middle-income Canadian moms and their year-old babies. It turns out that the ways moms act when they're playing and solving puzzles with their babies can explain some of the differences in children's development of executive functioning.

Children of moms who answered their children's requests for help quickly and accurately; talked about their children's preferences, thoughts, and memories during play; and encouraged successful strategies to help solve difficult problems performed better at a year and a half and 2 years on tasks that call for executive skills than children of moms who didn't use these techniques in interacting with their youngsters.

"The study sheds light on the role parents play in helping children develop skills that are important for later school success and social competence," according to Annie Bernier, professor of psychology at the University of Montreal and the study's lead author.

Excessive Internet Use Is Linked to Depression

People who spend a lot of time browsing the Internet are more likely to show depressive symptoms, according to the first large-scale study of its kind in the West by University of Leeds psychologists.

Researchers found striking evidence that some users have developed a compulsive internet habit, whereby they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites. The results suggest that this type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health.

Lead author Dr Catriona Morrison, from the University of Leeds, said: "The internet now plays a huge part in modern life, but its benefits are accompanied by a darker side.

"While many of us use the internet to pay bills, shop and send emails, there is a small subset of the population who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities."

These 'internet addicts' spent proportionately more time browsing sexually gratifying websites, online gaming sites and online communities. They also had a higher incidence of moderate to severe depression than non-addicted users.

"Our research indicates that excessive internet use is associated with depression, but what we don't know is which comes first -- are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?

"What is clear, is that for a small subset of people, excessive use of the internet could be a warning signal for depressive tendencies."

Incidents such as the spate of suicides among teenagers in the Welsh town of Bridgend in 2008 led many to question the extent to which social networking sites can contribute to depressive thoughts in vulnerable teenagers. In the Leeds study, young people were more likely to be internet addicted than middle-aged users, with the average age of the addicted group standing at 21 years.

"This study reinforces the public speculation that over-engaging in websites that serve to replace normal social function might be linked to psychological disorders like depression and addiction," added Dr Morrison. "We now need to consider the wider societal implications of this relationship and establish clearly the effects of excessive internet use on mental health."

This was the first large-scale study of Western young people to consider the relationship between internet addiction and depression. The internet use and depression levels of 1,319 people aged 16-51 were evaluated for the study, and of these, 1.2% were classed as being internet addicted. While small, this is larger than the incidence of gambling in the UK, which stands at 0.6%. The research will be published in the journal Psychopathology on 10th February.

Prayer Increases Forgiveness, Study Shows

We have all been guilty of a transgression at one time or another. That's because we're not perfect. We all commit hurtful acts, violate trust, and hope for forgiveness.

That's simply a fact, and here's another one: Nine out of 10 Americans say that they pray -- at least on occasion. Florida State University psychologist Nathaniel Lambert put these two facts together and came up with an idea: Why not take all that prayer and direct it at the people who have wronged us? Is it possible that directed prayer might spark forgiveness in those doing the praying -- and in the process preserve relationships?

Lambert and his colleagues decided to test this scientifically in two experiments appearing in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. In the first, they had a group of men and women pray one single prayer for their romantic partner's well being. Others -- the experimental controls -- they simply described their partner, speaking into a tape recorder.

Then they measured forgiveness. The scientists defined forgiveness as the diminishing of the initial negative feelings that arise when you've been wronged. Their results showed that those who had prayed for their partner harbored fewer vengeful thoughts and emotions: They were more ready to forgive and move on.

If one single prayer can cause such a striking difference in feelings, then what could prayer over a period of time do for a relationship? In a second study, the researchers had a group of men and women pray for a close friend every day for four weeks. Others simply reflected on the relationship, thinking positive thoughts but not praying for their friend's well-being. They also added another dimension. They used a scale to measure selfless concern for others -- not any particular person but other people generally. They speculated that prayer would increase selfless concern, which in turn would boost forgiveness.

And that's just what they found. But why? How does this common spiritual practice exert its healing effects? The psychological scientists have an idea: Most of the time, couples profess and believe in shared goals, but when they hit a rough patch, they often switch to adversarial goals like retribution and resentment. These adversarial goals shift cognitive focus to the self, and it can be tough to shake that self-focus. Prayer appears to shift attention from the self back to others, which allows the resentments to fade.

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.”