'Planned 49% limit' for NHS private patients in England

News of science:

NHS hospitals in England will be free to use almost half their hospital beds and theatre time for private patients under government plans.

A recent revision to the ongoing health bill will allow foundation hospitals to raise 49% of funds through non-NHS work if the bill gets through Parliament.
Most foundation trusts are now limited to a private income of about 2%.
The Health Secretary says the move will benefit NHS patients but Labour claimed it could lead to longer waiting lists.
The amendment to a clause of the Health and Social Care Bill was made shortly before Christmas by Health Minister Earl Howe.
Commenting on the move, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said lifting the private income cap for foundation hospitals would directly benefit NHS patients.

"If these hospitals earn additional income from private work that means there will be more money available to invest in NHS services," he said in a statement.

"Furthermore services for NHS patients will be safeguarded because foundation hospitals' core legal duty will be to care for them."
But Labour's shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham claimed the move could mean longer waits for NHS patients.
He said: "This surprise move, sneaked out just before Christmas, is the clearest sign yet of David Cameron's determination to turn our precious NHS into a US-style commercial system, where hospitals are more interested in profits than people.
"With NHS hospitals able to devote half of their beds to private patients, people will begin to see how our hospitals will never be the same again if Cameron's Health Bill gets through Parliament."
Critical services A cap on the amount of income hospitals can raise from private patients was put in place by Labour in 2003, amid political controversy over the setting up of foundation hospitals, which have more freedom to decide how their services are run. All NHS hospitals are set to become foundation hospitals by 2014.The cap has prevented hospitals from expanding their private work beyond the proportion earned in 2002. It varies from hospital to hospital, but is limited to about 2% in most hospitals.
In a small number of specialist hospitals, such as the Royal Marsden, the limit is set much higher, at around 30%. Health secretary Andrew Lansley has long said he will abolish the cap but it has been unclear how much private work would be allowed.
Proponents of the move have pointed out that the Royal Marsden is rated one of the best NHS providers while taking up to around a third of its income from private activity.
But critics are concerned that NHS patients would get a poor deal under the proposals, as foundation trusts with large financial deficits seek to take on more private work.
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said it was "a seriously worrying development".
"At a time when the health service has to make significant efficiency savings, it is only natural, that given the option, providers will look to maximise their income through private patients," he said.
"This will undoubtedly lead to a situation whereby those who can afford to pay will get faster access to better treatment, with increased waiting times and a decrease in quality for NHS patients."
He said existing NHS providers could be left to deliver critical services, which are the most expensive and challenging to run.
He added: "Really, it doesn't get much more serious than this; the Government has consistently assured us that the NHS is safe in their hands, but if allowed to go ahead, the removal of the cap could lead to the fundamental erosion of key NHS principles.
"The very heart of these principles being that access to care should be on the basis of clinical need, regardless of ability to pay."
Dual role But the chief executive of the health thinktank, the King's Fund, Chris Ham said hospitals had generated funds from private patients for many years, and it was possible to provide high quality care to both NHS and private patients in the same hospital.
"The cap is only a significant consideration for a minority of hospitals," he said.
"These hospitals should report annually on how they are ensuring NHS patients do not lose out if the cap is either removed or at a relatively high proportion of income."
News source:BBC

Shift work should carry health warnings, say medicos

News of science:
The strong correlation between shift work, obesity and type 2 diabetes has led health experts to call for the poor diet of shift workers to be considered a new occupational health hazard. The recommendations appear in an editorial in the journal PLoS Medicine.
Shift work is notoriously linked to poor patterns of eating, exacerbated by easier access to junk food compared with more healthy options. Around 20 percent of the working population in the Western world is engaged in shift work and while shift work occurs in virtually all industries, it is particularly prevalent in the health-care sector. The authors note that past studies, including a 20 year study involving US nurses, have provided compelling evidence of the link between shift work and type 2 diabetes in women. "There is now good evidence that proper screening and intervention strategies in rotating night shift workers are needed for prevention of diabetes," they argue.
The authors are concerned that as the world of work becomes increasingly 24 hour, shift work will become more common, which will likely accelerate the progression of the global epidemic of obesity and diabetes. They add that although some of the effects of shift work are probably unavoidable (such as the disruption of circadian rhythms), eating patterns are obvious targets for intervention. This would, however, require a change in thinking and an acceptance that occupational health needs to move into territory more personal than before: the diet of workers.
"Working patterns should now be considered a specific risk factor for obesity and type 2 diabetes," the authors conclude. "Unhealthy eating could legitimately be considered a new form of occupational hazard and workplaces, specifically those who employ shift workers, should lead the way in eliminating this hazard."
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Emergency rooms preparing for busy New Year's Eve Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/26/BA0G1MFED5.DTL#ixzz1hvYYggg1

News of science:
Bay Area doctors and emergency workers are bracing for what's likely to be the busiest weekend of the year.
New Year's Eve is typically loaded with alcohol-fueled deaths and injuries, and the coming celebration will probably be worse than most years because it falls on a Saturday, giving revelers a full day of partying and, presumably, a full day of recovery.
Last year, San Francisco emergency rooms saw a roughly 50 percent increase in New Year's patients from the previous year, according to estimates from local hospitals.
There were 100 more 911 calls citywide last year compared with the typical New Year's, according to the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management.
The increase was almost definitely due to New Year's Eve falling on a Friday night last year, officials said. Of the 650 emergency calls reported, 245 of them came between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. This year, the numbers could be even higher, emergency care experts said.
"We're already preparing to see more patients," said Dr. Malini Singh, interim medical director for San Francisco General Hospital's emergency department. "It's just a reality of New Year's Eve."

Alcohol-related injuries

Alcohol in some years has been to blame for more than half of the maladies that send people to emergency rooms around major holidays, especially those for which drinking is a key part of the celebration.
The worst injuries are typically associated with drunken driving. But emergency room workers also expect to see bad injuries from drunken biking, or from falling over drunk and ending up with broken bones or head wounds.
The injuries that, in some ways, are the most frustrating are the simple alcohol overdoses - young people, usually, who don't know their limits and show up at the emergency room so loaded that they can't speak or stand on their own.
"I don't want people to think I'm encouraging drinking, but if you do, you have to drink responsibly," said Dr. Steven Polevoi, medical director for the UCSF emergency department.
Alcohol poisoning is typically a highly unpleasant experience - and that's not including the hangover the next day - but not usually life threatening.
Still, people who fall unconscious while drinking and cannot be roused should be taken to a hospital and observed by professionals until they wake up and are able to speak in full sentences again, or at least able to say where they live.
In large enough doses, alcohol can cause brain function to become depressed, Singh said, resulting in breathing problems. Also, patients who are unconscious but throwing up run the risk of choking on their vomit.
"In general, most intoxicated people can at least get into a cab and sober up on their own," Singh said. "But if you find someone passed out on the ground, and they're breathing shallowly and you can't rouse them, these are people who probably aren't safe to go home."
On major holidays, Singh said San Francisco General Hospital will usually set aside a space in the emergency department for patients who just need to sober up.

Impact on other patients

Those patients, emergency room doctors say, take up valuable space that would otherwise be used by heart attack and stroke victims, or people with life-threatening injuries or illnesses.
"If you do drink so much that you end up in the back of an ambulance, you end up in an emergency department, and that has implications for other patients," Polevoi said. "You need to be aware that your behavior has an impact not just on you."
Polevoi said he realizes that many people are going to drink on New Year's Eve, and probably a lot of them will drink to excess. He asks only that they make arrangements not to drive, and that they try to use common sense when it comes to that fourth round of vodka shots.
"You have to know your limits," Polevoi said. "Don't say you can do eight shots and four glasses of Champagne. You can't."

News source:sfgate

Should porn stars be required to wear condoms? Voters may decide

News of science:

A proposed ballot measure that would require porn actors to wear condoms while filming in the city of Los Angeles has qualified for the June ballot, according to a letter from the city clerk certifying that proponents had gathered enough valid signatures.
The initiative still faces a legal challenge by L.A. City Atty. Carmen Trutanich. Trutanich filed court papers earlier this month saying that L.A. voters would have no legal authority to adopt the proposed measure even if it were placed on the ballot.
Trutanich argued that only the state — not the city — could legally impose rules requiring the use of condoms on porn sets and charging fees to pay for inspections.
The city attorney’s opinion is at odds, however, with that of the head of the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, which regulates workplace safety.
In a Dec. 23 email to one of Trutanich’s deputy city attorneys, Ellen Widess wrote that she believes the city could legally enact the restrictions envisioned in the proposed ballot measure.
“We don’t see a bar to the city or the county doing what they need to do,” Widess said in a telephone interview Monday evening. “We believe the city can use its authority to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among people involved in the adult film industry.”
Ged Kenslea, a spokesman for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the ballot measure’s main backer, said proponents gathered more than 70,000 signatures, well beyond the 41,000 required to place it on the ballot.
“We’re thrilled we’ve passed this initial threshold,” Kenslea said. “We believe we’re going to prevail in court and look forward to taking this issue directly to the voters.”
News source:latimesblogs.latimes

Tycoon behind breast implants scandal admits he KNEW they were not approved for use

News of science:
The tycoon at the heart of the breast implants scandal that has affected hundreds of thousands of women has admitted his company deliberately used inferior silicone gel.
The owner of bankrupt company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) Jean-Claude Mas revealed that PIP sold protheses with industrial-grade silicone that had not been approved by health authorities to be sold at discounted prices.
But wealthier clients were sold implants with high-quality gel, The Times newspaper reported.

'Inferior' silicone: The president of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), Jean-Claude Mas, holds a breast implant. Through his lawyer he has admitted that his company supplied unapproved impants

Mr Mas, 72, explained through his lawyer, Yves Haddad, that the reason behind the product was the his company had an 'economic objective' and that his management aimed to get 'the best cost'.
He also admitted that the industrial-grade silicone implants, which could cause health problems if they burst or leak, 'did not formally receive approval' and regulations were violated.

 

More...

• Don't panic about breast implants, says France as it's revealed U.S. warned manufacturer 10 YEARS before scandal broke

France's medical safety regulators AFSSAPS were never asked to inspect or approve the products.
Mr Mas said there was a basic and a high-end version of the implant, but that the cheaper version - which was 'five times cheaper' - was just as effective as the costlier version.
But through his lawyer Mr Mas, who there is a global search for, insisted that the silicone-gel was safe.

Health scare: One of PIP's breast implants, that have industrial-grade silicon inside

Concerns about the implants safety first surfaced 18 months ago, when surgeons noticed they were rupturing much more quickly than other brands.
The French health watchdog ordered an inquiry, which subsequently reported ‘serious irregularities’ in the implants and they were pulled off the market.
Mr Mas' lawyer told The Times that Mr Mas, who has not yet spoken publicly about the scare, would express himself in the courts and is not on the run but is at home after undergoing an operation.
The scare has affected 40,000 British women and 300,000 worldwide.
France's health secretary has appealed for calm in an attempt to quell growing fears over breast implants that have been sold to countries including Britain.
Xavier Bertrand admitted conflicting information about the products made by the now bankrupt PIP was having a devastating effect.
Mr Bertrand said: ‘It’s true this is not of an urgent nature,’ but he added: ‘We recommend that the breast implants are removed to avoid a rupture.’
In Britain, the Government has said women with the implants should not be ‘unduly worried’ because there was no evidence of a link to cancer or an increased risk of rupture.
Some of the 40,000 British women who have the implants are planning legal action, and concern is mounting among the 30,000 in France who have them.
It has emerged that in 2000 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned Mr MAS about 11 deviations from ‘good manufacturing practices’ at PIP’s plant in La Seyne-sur-Mer in the south of France.
Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) was told in 2000 that its saline implants were 'adulterated' -  a decade before it came under scrutiny from European regulators for its silicone implants.
More than 300,000 women who received the company's silicone implants, which were ordered off the market in 2010, have already been told they are at risk.
And now thousands more women who received its saline implants are facing potential safety issues.
But it is not yet known how many received the implant or whether indeed they are unsafe.

News source:dailymail

Regaining Weight Bad For The Health

News of science:Recent research has shown that even after dieting and losing weight, the body tends to try its best to regain the lost fat stores. Holiday times tend to be tough for those trying to stay trim, and New Year resolutions often don't stick.

Perhaps an article published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition will provide some extra incentive. The study shows that older women who lose weight tend to gain it back again as fat not muscle.

Barbara Nicklas, Ph.D., a gerontologist at the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation at Wake Forest Baptist and principal investigator for the study put it rather frankly :

"The body composition of some of the women was worse than before their weight loss ... When older women lose weight, they also lose lean mass. Most women will gain a lot of the weight back, but the majority of the weight regained is fat."

Dr. Nicklas and her colleagues evaluated 78 postmenopausal women with an average age of 58. The women were chosen with a criteria of having lost around twelve percent of their body weight as part of a study from a dieting program. Their change in body mass composition was recorded at the end of the weight loss program, comparing muscle with fat components. It was then measured again six and 12 months later. During the year of study the women did not follow any further weight loss program.

The aim of gathering the data was to establish whether women who regained weight did so in accordance with their original body mass ratios. At the end of the study, 53 of 78 (68 percent) of the women at the six-month follow-up and 52 of 68 (76 percent) the women at the 12-month follow-up had regained some of their lost weight. Eleven women (16 percent) weighed more at the 12-month follow-up than they did at baseline, and 16 (24 percent) women continued losing weight after the intervention.

Of those who regained weight, three quarters gained more than four pounds in the following six months and this number increased to nearly 85% at the twelve month mark. The so called "regainers" were then used to evaluate the type of body mass that constituted their weight gain.

Unfortunately for dieters everywhere, it appears that fat was regained far faster than muscle. At the beginning of the study it was assessed that the weight loss consisted of one third muscle (33%) and two thirds fat (67%), whereas the weight regain showed 81 percent fat and only 19 percent muscle.

As Dr. Nicklas points out :

"Most people will regain their weight after they lose it ... Young people tend to regain weight in the proportion that they lost it. But the older women in our study did not appear to be regaining the muscle that they lost during initial weight loss in the same way."

Post menopausal women already have it tough with hormonal changes and loss of bone density already known to occur, so losing muscle mass, and worse still, replacing it with fat, is probably the last thing they should be doing. It puts the issue of dieting at this age into a certain perspective and might even make those who need to lose weight for health reasons, more likely to consider surgical options with more reliable outcomes. As Dr. Nicklas puts it :

"There are certainly a lot of health benefits to weight loss, if you can keep the weight off ... For older women who lose weight, however, it is particularly important that they keep the weight off and continue to eat protein and stay physically active so that, if the weight does come back, it will be regained as muscle instead of fat."

The researchers cautioned that their study involved only sedentary abdominally obese, postmenopausal women, and the findings may differ in men or in younger populations - obviously future studies are needed to look at other sectors of the population. None the less, it's an interesting and useful study that will help doctors and patients alike to choose weight loss options more wisely. The researchers concluded that :

"Many health complications associated with overweight and obesity are improved with weight loss ... However, negative consequences (such as loss of muscle mass and bone density) are also associated with weight loss and are detrimental for older adults, which results in a reluctance to recommend intentional weight loss in this population...Because lean mass loss in older adults may be associated with the development of adverse health events and disability, it is important to examine whether the benefits of weight loss outweigh the risks in this population."

Nicklas' co-authors are: Kristen M. Beavers, Ph.D., Mary F. Lyles, M.D., Cralen C. Davis, M.S., and Daniel P. Beavers, Ph.D., all of Wake Forest Baptist; and Xuewen Wang, Ph.D., of Washington University School of Medicine, in St. Louis, MO.
News source:medicalnewstoday

China reveals its space plans up to 2016

News of science:
BEIJING (AP) — China plans to launch space labs and manned ships and prepare to build space stations over the next five years, according to a plan released Thursday that shows the country's space program is gathering momentum.
China has already said its eventual goals are to have a space station and put an astronaut on the moon. It has made methodical progress with its ambitious lunar and human spaceflight programs, but its latest five-year plan beginning next year signals an acceleration.
By the end of 2016, China will launch space laboratories, manned spaceship and ship freighters, and make technological preparations for the construction of space stations, according to the white paper setting out China's space progress and future missions.
China's space program has already made major breakthroughs in a relatively short time, although it lags far behind the United States and Russia in space technology and experience.
The country will continue exploring the moon using probes, start gathering samples of the moon's surface, and "push forward its exploration of planets, asteroids and the sun."
It will use spacecraft to study the properties of black holes and begin monitoring space debris and small near-Earth celestial bodies and build a system to protect spacecraft from debris.
The paper also says China will improve its launch vehicles, improve its communications, broadcasting and meteorological satellites and develop a global satellite navigation system, intended to rival the United States' dominant global positioning system (GPS) network.
China places great emphasis on the development of its space industry, which is seen as a symbol of national prestige.
Its space principles — including peaceful development, enhancing international cooperation and deep space exploration — are largely unchanged from its previous two documents detailing the progress of China's space missions, released in 2000 and 2006.
In 2003, China became the third country behind the U.S. and Russia to launch a man into space and, five years later, completed a spacewalk. Toward the end of this year, it demonstrated automated docking between its Shenzhou 8 craft and the Tiangong 1 module, which will form part of a future space laboratory.
In 2007, it launched its first lunar probe, Chang'e-1, which orbited the moon, collecting data and a complete map of the moon.
Since 2006, China's Long March rockets have successfully launched 67 times, sending 79 spacecraft into orbit.
Some elements of China's program, notably the firing of a ground-based missile into one of its dead satellites four years ago, have alarmed American officials and others who say such moves could set off a race to militarize space. That the program is run by the military has made the U.S. reluctant to cooperate with China in space, even though the latter insists its program is purely for peaceful ends.
"China always adheres to the use of outer space for peaceful purposes, and opposes weaponization or any arms race in outer space," Thursday's white paper states.
The Chinese government's policy is to "reinforce" space cooperation with developing countries and "value" space cooperation with developed countries. The paper lists cooperation between China and countries including Russia, Brazil, France and Britain, and says of the United States: NASA's director visited China "and the two sides will continue to make dialogue regarding the space field."
News source:google

Moon best place to find alien footprints: Scientists

News of science:LONDON: The Moon may be the best place to look for aliens as their footprints on its surface would last far longer than radio signals, scientists have suggested.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, project looks for alien life in a one, main specific way by scanning for radio signals deliberately beamed towards earth from distant stars.

But, astronomers at Arizona State University suggested that we may be missing evidence much closer to home -- the Moon, the Daily Mail reported.

They believe that alien life may have "left traces on the moon in the form of an artifact or surface modification of lunar features", and that alien "footprints" on the moon would last far longer than radio signals.

"Evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence could come from any signatures of non-human technology," they wrote in a paper published in 'Acta Astronautica' journal.

According to them, any alien mission to our solar system is liable to have occurred long ago -- but that the surface of the moon could preserve the signs for millions of years.

The images captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of NASA, which is currently mapping the moon's surface to 0.5m resolution, provide an easy and cheap way to look for these signs, they explained.

"Although there is only a tiny probability that alien technology would have left traces on the moon in the form of an artifact or surface modification of lunar features, it has the virtue of being close, and of preserving traces for an immense duration," they wrote.

"The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) would have a high impact if successful. Therefore, it makes sense to widen the search as much as possible. To date, SETI has been dominated by seeking deliberately beamed radio messages."
News source:economictimes.indiatimes

Any search for extra-terrestrial life should begin with the Moon

News of science:
Where to search for ET? The Universe is a big place after all. Current efforts focus on looking for radio signals sent by civilisations on planets orbiting nearby stars. That has been the M.O. for SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) for half a century now. But there may be a better way.
In a paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica, Paul Davies and Robert Wagner of Arizona State University say that although there is logic to the radio search, it has a needle-in-haystack element to it and there may be a better place to look – our very own Moon.
Paul Davies has some of the most interesting thoughts regarding alien life around and it is always worth taking his ideas seriously. And his lunar argument is persuasive.
It goes like this: while it may indeed be the case that aliens use radio to communicate, the chances of us inadvertently eavesdropping on ‘real-time’ conversations is minimal. Furthermore, a DELIBERATE attempt to send a focused, high-power signal (of the sort we could easily detect) would depend on them firstly knowing that there is probably someone here worth sending a signal to, and secondly these aliens deciding to send a message just after (or if they are more than about 50 light years away just before) we developed radio telescope technology.
Instead of signals, which are probably ephemeral (although there is the possibility of long-lived robot beacons sending generic signals to all life-friendly star systems in the vicinity), maybe we should also look for artefacts. No, not UFOs (although we must keep an open mind) but evidence that aliens – either in person or more likely in the shape of robotic probes of the sort we ourselves build, have explored our Solar System at any point in the last two billion years or so – the period during which at least one of its planets has been home to substantial quantities of life.
If there are any aliens within about 300 light years of Earth with telescopes even a bit better than ours, and furthermore if any of these telescope-wielding aliens have existed at any time in the last 2bn years, they would almost certainly have detected Earth’s biosphere spectroscopically, just as we hope to be able to do when the next generation of super-large telescopes comes online. We are already at the stage where we can detect earth-sized planets orbiting nearby stars (a couple were announced last week). With bigger mirrors we will be able to ‘see’ the atmospheres of these exoworlds, detect (if they are there) the signs of life – oxygen, methane, perhaps even see the light-dark variation as the planet rotates, indicative of seas and continents. Build a REALLY big telescope (there is no funding for this sort of thing yet but the technology will be there in a few decades) and you could even see city lights.
So say a nearby civilisation DID detect Earth’s biosphere, say a hundred million years ago (when the dinosaurs were in their pomp). What then? Well, they could send a signal. But of course the dinosaurs, impressive as they were, never developed radio technology. So there would be no reply.

Convenient: Our own Moon would be an ideal platform from which alien life could observe Earth

They might decide to do something else. With a big enough telescope they would be able to see not only Earth but its hugely convenient satellite. You really could not design a better long-term observing platform for our planet than the Moon. Geologically stable, with no atmosphere or life, and tidally locked so one side always faces Earth, the Moon is in effect a gigantic natural space station. If aliens wanted to send a robotic probe to explore Earth, the best place to land it would not be on Earth itself possibly (with our oceans, weather and fierce animals the chances of a robot probe coming to grief would be high) but instead the Moon.
In the right place, such a probe, built to last, could survive millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions of years. One such place could be the peak of Malapert Mountain, part of a crater rim near the Lunar South Pole, This is in almost perpetual daylight and has an uninterrupted line-of-sight view of Earth. An observatory here would never be short of power. If I were an alien, this is where I would send my probe. Forget death-ray wielding tripods or monoliths, the most likely visitor to the Earth-Moon system would be a small, unobtrusive and relatively simple machine equipped with a moderate telescope, a powerful on-board computer, some hefty lead shielding (to protect against solar flares), solar panels and a radio transmitter. It could be the size of an Apollo lander, in which case we should be able to see it (and Davies suggests we should start scouring lunar reconnaissance photos) but it could be even smaller, in which case we will probably have to wait until humans visit the Moon again in person. There might be one there right now, observing, collating, sending back data on the peculiar civilisation which exists on the blue-green world.
We last visited the Moon in 1972. Most people think there is nothing there. Alien machines aside, that isn’t true. But if Paul Davies’s hunch pans out then this grey world of rocks, dust and vacuum may turn out to be the hottest ticket in the Solar System.

News source:dailymail

News of science:
Skywatchers will be hoping for clear skies from today because particles from a recent solar storm will slam into Earth and produce amazing Northern Lights, or auroras.
On the downside, experts expect radio blackouts for a few days, caused by the radiation from the flare – or coronal mass ejection (CME) – causing magnetic storms.
The flare is part of a larger increase in activity in the Sun, which runs in 11-year cycles. It is expected to peak around 2013.
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

It's coming this way: The CME, seen by Nasa's STEREO-B spacecraft, can be seen blasting out from the Sun on the right-hand side (circled)

Stunning Northern Lights are expected in the next few days from radiation produced by a huge solar flare

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center wrote: ‘Category G1 (Minor) geomagnetic storms are expected 28 and 29 December due to multiple coronal mass ejection arrivals. R1 (Minor) radio blackouts are expected until 31 December.’
Devices that depend on radio waves include GPS systems, radios and mobile phones.

 

More...

• Incredible shot shows what our sun will look like as it tears itself apart
• Are we looking in the wrong place for ET? Scientists suggest 'footprints' on moon could be best place to look for alien life
• Huge black hole at the heart of Milky Way 'could suck in planets', say astronomers

A coronal mass ejection contains billions of tons of gases bursting with X-rays and ultraviolet radiation that are flung into space at around 5million mph.
They are mind-bogglingly hot – around 100,000,000C.
The Earth is occasionally hosed by these ejections, leading to amazing shimmering light shows.

Heat is on: Solar flares spray gases out at 5million mph and at 100,000,000C. Pictured is a flare that erupted in June this year

They are caused by the ionised solar particles becoming imprisoned by Earth’s magnetic field, exciting the gases in the atmosphere and emitting bursts of energy in the form of light.
However, these particles can also cause magnetic storms, which in extreme cases have been known to disrupt satellites and electricity grids.
In 1989, a CME was held responsible for leaving six million people in Quebec, Canada, without power.
Last month one of the largest storms our star can produce was detected.
Known as an X1.9 flare, it was one of the biggest seen in years.
The flare was so powerful that it disrupted communications systems on earth a short time later.
Another gigantic flare occurred in August - shown in the video below - but because it took place on the side of the Sun not facing Earth, there was no disruption to communications or power.

  News source:dailymail

Moon probes to go into orbit this weekend

News of science:

NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft will be placed into orbit around the moon over the New Year weekend, in preparation for their mission to study its composition and gravity field.
GRAIL-A will be placed into orbit at 1:21 pm PST on December 31, with GRAIL-B following the next day at 2:05 pm PST.
Both orbiters will approach the moon from the south, flying near the lunar south pole. A roughly 40-minute insertion burn will place each orbiter into a near-polar, elliptical orbit with a period of 11.5 hours.
"Our team may not get to partake in a traditional New Year's celebration, but I expect seeing our two spacecraft safely in lunar orbit should give us all the excitement and feeling of euphoria anyone in this line of work would ever need," says David Lehman, project manager for GRAIL at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Over the next few weeks, a series of burns will cut this orbital period down to just under two hours.
"This mission will rewrite the textbooks on the evolution of the moon," says Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from MIT.
"Our two spacecraft are operating so well during their journey that we have performed a full test of our science instrument and confirmed the performance required to meet our science objectives."
The probes have taken the long way round to reach the moon. Rather than the three-day trip the Apollo crews experienced, the GRAIL ships have taken some three months and covered more than 2.5 million miles.
When the science phase of the mission begins in March 2012, the two GRAILs will be in a near-polar, near-circular orbit about 34 miles above the surface.
The two spacecraft will transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them as they orbit the moon. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity, caused both by visible features such as mountains and craters and by masses hidden beneath the lunar surface, they will move slightly toward and away from each other.
An instrument aboard each spacecraft will measure the changes in their relative velocity very precisely, and the data will be used to produce a high-resolution map of the moon's gravitational field.

ews source: tgdaily

Metamorphosis: the very hungry caterpillar hits puberty

News of science:

Every kid knows that caterpillars turn into butterflies. But how exactly does a fat grub sprout wings, legs and feelers - and why go to all that trouble?

By Bernie Hobbs

Caterpillar metamorphosis makes human puberty look like a walk in the park (Source: iStockphoto)

Related Stories

• Butterflies 'fly early as planet warms', Science Online, 17 Mar 2010
• Summer of singing cicadas, Science Online, 17 Feb 2001
• Butterflies take a winter break, Science Online, 20 Jul 2000

It's not surprising that we don't tell kids what really happens to caterpillars inside a chrysalis. Metamorphosis is pretty gruesome stuff, involving flesh-dissolving enzymes and limbs, wings and genitals bursting through what's left of all that tissue. No wonder the whole thing is done behind closed skin.
Considering the scope of change, it's amazing that the metamorphosis comes down to the interplay between a couple of hormones and some bags of cells that are just itching to grow into butterfly parts.

Caterpillars: the inside story

If you look inside a caterpillar you won't see a butterfly all rolled up waiting to emerge. You'll just see more caterpillar and some well-chewed leaves.
But with a decent microscope and some excellent navigation skills you might glimpse some tiny disc-shaped bags of cells here and there. They're called imaginal discs, and once the caterpillar silks itself up in a chrysalis they kick into action, each one of them growing into an antenna, eye, wing or other butterfly bit.
The cells in the imaginal discs are like stem cells without commitment issues. From early on in the caterpillar's life, each one of them is locked into becoming a particular bit of butterfly anatomy. And they're all just sitting there, waiting to get the go ahead to start making butterfly parts.
But to build a butterfly you have to break down a caterpillar.
During the week or two spent in its chrysalis (pupation) the caterpillar gradually digests all of its own tissue, releasing the nutrients that all those imaginal discs then use to grow into butterfly wings, legs, feelers and the rest. It's the ultimate in recycling makeovers, and it's due to some interdependent hormonal changes that make puberty look like a doddle.

The hormonal tango

The thing that drives caterpillars (and other flying insect larvae) to stop feeding their faces, settle down somewhere safe, and pupate, is the hormone ecdysone. It's the same hormone that causes the larvae to moult each time they outgrow their current skin. The reason this final moult into a butterfly is so different from the earlier ones is because the level of another hormone — juvenile hormone — is suddenly lower.
Juvenile hormone is the great controller of metamorphosis, by delaying it until the caterpillar has moulted and grown enough to produce a decent-sized butterfly. It works by blocking the genes in the imaginal discs, keeping those wannabe butterfly cells in a holding pattern. So while juvenile hormone is being pumped out of tiny glands behind the brain, all the caterpillar can do is feed, grow and — when instructed by ecdysone — moult. (It's so good at preventing larvae from maturing that a lot of insecticides have been based on artificial juvenile hormone).
But juvenile hormone isn't just a suppressor of butterfly development, it's essential for the caterpillar's own cells to stay alive.
The cells that make up the caterpillar's muscles, gut and salivary glands are destined to end up as spare parts for the greater-butterfly-good. Each cell is poised to self-destruct during metamorphosis by activating some of its own enzymes, called caspases.
Like digestive enzymes, caspases tear through the cell's proteins, releasing prime butterfly-making material. (This process is called apoptosis, or programmed cell death, and it's the same thing that happens to about 50 million cells in your body every day to make sure you don't double in size every time your cells multiply). At any given time juvenile hormone is the only thing stopping all those caterpillar cells from ending it all.
Like other flying insects that undergo complete metamorphosis, caterpillars go through five regular moults during their mindless hungry lives, upsizing their outer skin each time.
When the caterpillar is big enough, usually after the fifth moult, the level of juvenile hormone drops off. With less juvenile hormone around, instead of inducing a regular moult the ecdysone now drives the caterpillar to pupate. Once the caterpillar is safely ensconced in some kind of silky hideaway, juvenile hormone stops being made altogether.
Without juvenile hormone to suppress the imaginal discs, or to keep the regular cells from topping themselves, the two trademarks of metamorphosis kick into full swing. And in the kind of beautifully orchestrated way that only nature or really top-shelf creators can manage, the demise of caterpillar and creation of butterfly happen side-by-side.

A lot of effort for a makeover

Butterflies are pretty and all, but that's not the only pay-off for all that metamorphic effort. Butterflies and caterpillars don't just look different; they've got different ideas of what constitutes food and accommodation. While caterpillars live off leaves and are plant-bound, those butterflies that do feed only drink nectar, and they can fly from place to place looking for love and somewhere to lay the progeny.
Those fundamental differences mean the adults don't compete with the juveniles for food or habitat, so the species has a better shot at making it. Which probably goes a long way towards explaining why more than half the animal species on the planet are insects that undergo the same kind of complete metamorphosis. As far as evolutionary strategies go, it's gold. And come mating time it doesn't hurt that the adults are almost always better lookers than all those larvae that only a mother could love.
News souece:abc.net

Taking the pulse of Ngozumpa

News of science:Ngozumpa Glacier in Nepal snakes away from the sixth highest mountain in the world, Cho Oyo.
It's not the greatest glacier to look at - far from it. It's smothered in a layer of rocky debris that's fallen from the surrounding cliffs, giving it a very grey, dirty appearance.
But Ngozumpa is generating a lot of scientific interest at the moment.
The Nepalese Himalayas have been warming significantly more than the global mean temperature in recent decades.
Glaciers in much of the region are showing signs of shrinking, thinning, and retreating; and this is producing a lot of melt water.
On Ngozumpa, some of this water is seen to pool on the surface and then drain away via a series of streams and caverns to the snout of the glacier.
There, some 25km from the mountain, an enormous lake is growing behind a mound of dumped rock fragments.
This lake, called Spillway, has the potential to be about 6km long, 1km wide and 100m deep.
The concern is that this great mass of water could eventually breach the debris dam and hurtle down the valley, sweeping away the Sherpa villages in its path. The threat is not immediate, but it's a situation that needs monitoring, say scientists.

One of the researchers at work on Ngozumpa is Ulyana Horodyskyj, from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US.
She is setting up remote cameras to monitor the surface, or supraglacial, pools of water that dot the length of Ngozumpa. Some are small; some are big - the size of several football fields.
Already, she has been able to establish just how dynamic these water features can be as they drain and fill in rapid time.
The volumes involved can be prodigious. In one event, her cameras spied a supraglacial lake losing more than 100,000 cubic metres of water in just two days. Within five days, the lake had recovered half the volume, fed by waters from higher up the glacier.
"Say I came the week before and the week after a lake drained - it would seem like nothing had happened because the lake level would appear to be the same," Ms Horodyskyj told BBC News.
"But my timelapse photography tells me that something has happened - 40 Olympic-size swimming pools just got sent down the glacier."
The CIRES researcher wants to understand the part these supraglacial lakes play in the erosion of Ngozumpa.

Horodyskyj is placing cameras on the cliffs to monitor the water features on the glacier below

Debris-covered glaciers don't melt in the same way as clean glaciers. The rock covering, depending on its depth, will insulate the ice from solar radiation. But remove it - as happens in these fluctuating lakes - and the rate of melting will increase.
"The enhanced melting comes from the bare ice walls in the lakes," she explains.
"The melt rate below the debris covering is about 2cm per day, but on these walls it's 4cm per day. As the lake drains, it exposes the walls which can then calve."
Ms Horodyskyj's assumption is that many of the lakes on Ngozumpa's surface are directly connected; and as one of them drains, it's likely that another lake at lower elevation is filling. However, the routes taken by the plumbing system are not always obvious.
This is being investigated by Doug Benn from the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), Norway.
He's been climbing through the vast channels cut by flowing water inside Ngozumpa. Some of these "ice pipes" open up into spectacular caverns.
"It's widely recognised that the glaciers in this region are melting down as a result of global warming, but what hasn't been realised is that they're also being eaten away from the inside as well," he says.
"These glaciers are becoming like Swiss cheeses, so everything is happening more rapidly than is apparent by just looking at the surface."
Dr Benn visits the conduits after the melt season, after the water has stopped flowing. It would be too dangerous to get inside them at the height of summer.
It would seem the channels control where some surface pools and lakes form. It is as if the conduits are the templates.
"They're lines of weakness. As the glacier melts down, the roofs of the tunnels fall in and bare ice is exposed," explained Dr Benn. "The rock debris on the surface would normally slow down melting, but the existence of these weaknesses inside Ngozumpa opens it up and makes it melt far faster than would otherwise be the case."

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Timelapse of a Ngozumpa supraglacial lake filling and draining (Courtesy of CIRES)

One of his students, Sarah Thompson, is concentrating her study on the end story - the snout of the glacier. This is where the water sent down Ngozumpa is gathering, in the rapidly growing Spillway Lake.
It is bounded by the moraine - an enormous pile of granite fragments dropped by the glacier over millennia.
At this point the glacier is stagnant; it is not moving. Again, the exposed ice walls that line Spillway Lake calve into the water, raising its level.
"We've got quite a short time period - the past 10 years - but it's an exponential growth in area," Ms Thompson says of Spillway's size. "And when we look at other similar lakes in the region, Spillway is on the same sort of trajectory to their development."
The Swansea University researcher added: "The expansion is way beyond what you would expect from the rates of ice melting, ablation and even calving.
"We need to understand at an early stage the processing rates so that we can predict ahead of time what is likely to happen and, if needs be, go in and mitigate all of this before it becomes such a significant hazard.
"In my work, we've been trying to identify where there might be weak points in the moraine dam, and we believe we've identified a few areas where in future you might want to take action."
Spillway is not expected to burst out anytime soon. It could be two decades or more before a 6km-long body of water is built up. But the difficulty of working in the region and bringing heavy equipment into the area means a long-term strategy for managing the lake's evolution is essential.

The conduits are investigated after the melt season, after all the water has gone.

 

Blood bank 'perfect storm' threat for 2012

News of science:

Blood stocks may be hit by 2012 events like the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee, according to the NHS body responsible for England and north Wales.

Extra bank holidays could lead to a drop in donations as most people give blood during the working week, said NHS Blood and Transplant.
It says hospitals will need about 2m pints (1.1m litres) of blood, plus an extra supply for Olympic visitors.
It called on the public to make blood donation a New Year's resolution.
Supplies of donated blood are needed by the NHS for people having surgery or giving birth and those with conditions such as cancer and sickle cell disease.
NHS Blood and Transplant said it was concerned the cluster of major events in 2012 could create a "perfect storm" and dramatically impact the number of blood donations coming in.
Assistant director for blood donation, Jon Latham, said: "Approximately two million units [470mls - just under a pint] of blood will be needed by hospitals throughout 2012, and the equivalent of 500 extra donations will be needed each week in the first six months to help us build blood stocks and cover extra potential need from Olympic visitors.

Continue reading the main story

Blood donation

• The NHS needs 7,000 voluntary blood donations daily
• First-time donors should be aged 17-65, weighing at least 50kg, and in good health
• You can give blood three times a year
• Source: NHS Blood and Transplant

"We're calling on the public to make regular blood donation a New Year's resolution.

"Whether you've never donated before or haven't done for a while, please book your appointment and help save lives in 2012."
Figures show that in 2011 thousands fewer people donated blood due to a crop of bank holidays around Easter and the Royal Wedding.
And in 2010, on the day of the football World Cup quarter final, and Andy Murray's Wimbledon semi-final, there was a 12% drop in donations compared with the previous year.
In 2012 there will be a cluster of events and bank holidays between April and August, including the Queen's Jubilee, Euro 2012, Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.
News source:BBC

Deep-sea creatures at volcanic vent

News of science:

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The team used an underwater robot to film the creatures living around the hydrothermal vent (Footage: University of Southampton)

Researchers have been surveying volcanic underwater vents - sometimes called black smokers - in the South West Indian Ridge in the Indian Ocean.
The UK team found an array of creatures living in the super-heated waters, including yeti crabs, scaly-foot snails and sea cucumbers.
They believe some of the species may be new to science.
Hydrothermal vents were first discovered in 1977. These fissures in the ocean floor spew out fiercely hot, mineral-rich water, yet somehow, diverse ecosystems are able to thrive in these hostile conditions.

Species such as this sea cucumber are not found in neighbouring ridge systems

The team, from the University of Southampton, was particularly interested in the vents on the South West Indian Ridge because this range is linked to the Mid Atlantic Ridge and the Central Indian Ridge, where vent life has been well documented.
This area is also unusual because it is an "ultra-slow spreading" ridge, which means it is less volcanically active than other ridges, with fewer vents that are further apart.
Dr Jon Copley, chief scientist of the Indian Ocean vents project, said: "This place is a real crossroads in terms of the vent species around the world."
Using a remote-operated, underwater robot called Kiel 6000, from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM Geomar), in Germany, the team was able to train their cameras on the vents.
In the hottest habitat around the black smokers, they found snails and shrimp, as well as mussels, sea cucumbers and crabs. They then compared these with the animals found at vents on the neighbouring ridges.
Dr Copley said: "I was expecting there to be some similarities to what we know from the Atlantic, and some similarities to what we know from the Indian Ocean vents, and that was true, but we also found types of animals here which are not known from either of those neighbouring areas, and that was a big surprise.
"One was a type of yeti crab. There are two currently described species of yeti crab known from the Pacific, and it isn't like those, but it is the same type of animal, with long, hairy arms.

The team used an underwater robot to find creatures, such as this scaly-foot snail, around the vents in the Indian Ocean

"Also some sea cucumbers - not known from the Atlantic or Central Indian vents, but known from the Pacific."
He added: "We've got links to lots of different parts of the world here, which is very exciting."
The team was also surprised at the diversity of life they found during this expedition, which was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc).
Dr Copley said: "In a lot of other vent fields I've been to, in this hot zone where you get the animals there is often just one type of animal living there: in the deep Mid Atlantic Ridge, it's the shrimp. But here, we have seen three to four all in the same zone."

There was a diverse mix of creatures, including this stalked barnacle, around the vents

The findings should help researchers to learn more about how life moves from vent to vent: vents are short lived, and without the ability to hop from one system to the next, life there would go extinct.
"That is why vents are a great place to understand how species disperse and evolve in the deep oceans, because they are like little islands," Dr Copley added.
Despite these findings, the researchers are worried about the future of this underwater terrain.
China has been granted an exploratory licence by the International Seabed Authority to explore the potential of mining the vents in this area for their rich minerals.
Dr Copley said: "This vent field is the size of a few football pitches, and it seems possible that it is the only known range of some of these species.
"It would be very premature to start disrupting it before we really know the true extent of what lives in it."

Shrimp like this one may be under threat from deep-sea mining

 

News source:BBC 

Marine surveys record 'brainless fish' off Orkney

News of science:

Scotland's biggest horse mussel bed and a "faceless and brainless" fish were recorded during government-backed surveys this year.

The work covered almost 2,200 square miles - equivalent to an area one and a quarter times the size of the Cairngorms National Park.
The Scottish government has hailed the finds made during the surveys.
WWF Scotland said the results highlighted the need to better protect the marine environment.
Scottish Natural Heritage and Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University were among organisations that carried out the work.
Underwater video was shot and acoustic and 3D images were used in the surveys.
Vessels from Marine Scotland, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and the Northern Lighthouse Board were also involved.
Several rare species were recorded.
Off the west coast, fan mussels were found. Growing to up to 48cm long, the mussels are Scotland's largest sea shell.
Around the Small Isles more than 100 specimens of marine life were noted.
Off Tankerness on Orkney, the government said the prehistoric "faceless and brainless" amphioxus fish was recorded.
The rarely-seen species was regarded as a modern representative of the first animals that evolved a backbone, the Scottish government said.

Flame shell beds were found in Loch Linnhe in Argyll

With a nerve chord down its back, the fish does not have a clearly defined face or brain.
The largest horse mussel bed in Scotland was recorded near Noss Head in Caithness.
The molluscs stabilise seabeds, which in turn provides habitat for other species, and can live up to 50 years.
Other finds included flame shell beds in Loch Linnhe in Argyll and new communities of northern feather star off the Sound of Canna.
Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead described the finds as "weird and wonderful".
He added: "The waters around Scotland are rich in such fascinating biodiversity and it's our responsibility to protect this fragile environment.
"That's why we have ramped up our marine survey work, with plans being prepared for new surveys in 2012 to further our knowledge of what lies beneath Scotland's seas."
News source:BBC

Soyuz back in service after failed launch

News of science:

Five days after a failed launch, the Russian Soyuz rocket system has been pressed back into service.

The vehicle successfully put six spacecraft in orbit for US satellite phone and data company, Globalstar.
The Soyuz lifted away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1709 GMT, ejecting the last of the six Globalstar platforms an hour and 40 minutes later.
Last Friday, a Soyuz malfunctioned soon after launching from the Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia.
Parts were reported to have crashed back down into the Novosibirsk region of central Siberia.
Last week's Soyuz was a type 2.1b, compared with the 2.1a version used for the Globalstar mission.
The two variants share many design features but use different engines in their third segment, or stage - the part of the Soyuz said to have been responsible for the failure five days ago.
Pressing concern Wednesday's successful outing will come as a huge relief for Globalstar.
The company is the first of the major sat-phone concerns to start upgrading its systems. The six latest satellites follow 12 others launched in July this year and October last year.
The upgrade is a pressing concern for the company because its existing constellation is failing.
Rolled out in the late 1990s, many of these original satellites have suffered suspected radiation damage to their S-band transmitter equipment, which has limited their ability to handle two-way communications.
Globalstar is pinning its future on its second-generation constellation. It plans to put in orbit at least another six satellites to boost service reach and quality.
Following Wednesday's flight, Tony Navarra, Globalstar's president of global operations, was quick to thank the Soyuz team and Arianespace, the French company that markets commercial Soyuz launches through its Starsem subsidiary.
"These satellites were flawlessly placed exactly where we needed them so that our ground stations could find them on the very first pass," he said. "It's amazing that we can find six satellites within 30 minutes of them being placed into space."
Investigations continue into the cause of last Friday's launch malfunction, which resulted in the loss of a Russian Meridian telecommunications satellite.
It was the latest in a recent run of flight failures for the national rocket industry.
In August, a Soyuz failure on an unmanned mission to resupply the space station led to a six-week suspension of flights.
On 18 August, the week before the loss of the space station mission, a Proton rocket failed to put a communications satellite in its proper orbit.
Back on 1 February, a Rokot launcher also underperformed with a similar outcome.
And on 5 December last year, a Proton carrying three navigation spacecraft fell into the Pacific Ocean. This particular failure is widely believed to have contributed to the decision of the Russian government to replace the then space agency chief, Anatoly Perminov.
Vladimir Popovkin took over as the head of Roscosmos in April.
The rocket failures come on top of the loss of Phobos-Grunt, Russia's most ambitious planetary mission in decades. It became stuck in Earth orbit after its launch in November and will probably fall back to Earth next month.
News source:BBC

Gentile cites positive, negative effects of video games on the brain in Nature Reviews article

News of science:Douglas Gentile says his own research has found both positive and negative effects from playing video games. And the Iowa State University associate professor of psychology cites examples of both in a new article he coauthored in the December issue of Nature Reviews/Neuroscience.
In the "Brains on video games" article, six experts shed light on the current understanding of the positive and negative ways in which playing video games can affect cognition and behavior. It explains how that knowledge can be harnessed for educational and rehabilitative purposes.
For parents who just purchased new video games for their kids this holiday season, Gentile says the article shows that it's not simply a "black and white" issue when it comes to how video games affect the brain.
"Six researchers from four different research groups all wrote perspectives for this article -- all independent of each other, but focusing on a wide range of issues," said Gentile, who runs the Media Research Lab at Iowa State. "What is most valuable is that it cites research that video games can contribute to real problems, but also can have some real benefits."
Beneficial effects of video games
In the article, Gentile cites research demonstrating that video games can have beneficial effects. One study by University of Rochester (N.Y.) researchers Daphne Bavelier and C. Shawn Green on the first-person shooter game "Unreal Tournament" found that players improved perceptual and attention skills by playing that game.
Although fewer studies have examined the positive effects of video gaming on social behavior, experimental studies (on which Gentile collaborated) in the U.S., Japan and Singapore found that playing pro-social games led to more subsequent "helping" behavior in users. In one longitudinal study, the researchers found that children who played more pro-social games early in the school year demonstrated increased helpful behaviors later in the school year.
"If content is chosen wisely, video games can actually enhance some skills," Gentile said. "But overall, the research has demonstrated that they're far more powerful teaching tools than we imagined. But the power can be both good and bad."
Gentile documents negative effects too, "which makes sense when one considers that most of the effects reported are learning effects at the core," he wrote. He cited the most comprehensive meta-analysis conducted to date -- one led by his colleague and ISU Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson -- which included 136 papers detailing 381 independent tests of association conducted on 130,296 research participants. It found that violent game play led to significant increases in desensitization, physiological arousal, aggressive cognition and aggressive behavior. It also decreased pro-social behavior.
"The evidence that playing video games induces criminal or serious physical violence is much weaker than the evidence that games increase the types of aggression that happen every day in school hallways," Gentile wrote. "As a developmental psychologist, I care deeply about the everyday aggression (verbal, relational and physical), whereas critics of the research seem to be mostly interested in criminal violence."
He reports that there aren't many studies on how playing video games affects attention needed in the classroom. But those that exist -- including two conducted at Iowa State -- suggest that there is a relation between video gaming and attention problems in school.
Addressing addiction
Gentile also addresses video game addiction in the article. In addition to his two landmark studies on pathological game play, he wrote that there are now scores of studies showing that the pattern of problems pathological gamers face are very similar to the problems people with substance abuse or gambling addictions have.
He contends that games offer significant promise for education, particularly since they have been found to be such effective teaching tools. But while studies of educational software demonstrate that children do learn from playing educational games, Gentile says that the amount of money spent on educational games is a tiny fraction of the amount spent on a commercial entertainment game. "Therefore," he wrote, "most educational games aren't as interesting, fun or good as even a mediocre commercial game."
Given all the different effects of video games on the brain cited in the article, Gentile is hopeful it may reduce some dichotomous thinking in the field of video game research.
"Playing video games is neither good nor bad," he concluded. "Existing research shows that they are powerful teaching tools, and therefore we need to harness that potential, aiming to maximize the benefits while minimizing the potential harms."
News source:medicalxpress

Elderly can be as fast as young in some brain tasks, study shows

News of science:Both children and the elderly have slower response times when they have to make quick decisions in some settings.

But recent research suggests that much of that slower response is a conscious choice to emphasize accuracy over speed.
In fact, healthy older people can be trained to respond faster in some decision-making tasks without hurting their accuracy – meaning their cognitive skills in this area aren't so different from younger adults.
"Many people think that it is just natural for older people's brains to slow down as they age, but we're finding that isn't always true," said Roger Ratcliff, professor of psychology at Ohio State University and co-author of the studies.
"At least in some situations, 70-year-olds may have response times similar to those of 25-year olds."
Ratcliff and his colleagues have been studying cognitive processes and aging in their lab for about a decade. In a new study published online this month in the journal Child Development, they extended their work to children.
Ratcliff said their results in children are what most scientists would have expected: very young children have slower response times and poorer accuracy compared to adults, and these improve as the children mature.
But the more interesting finding is that older adults don't necessarily have slower brain processing than younger people, said Gail McKoon, professor of psychology at Ohio State and co-author of the studies.
"Older people don't want to make any errors at all, and that causes them to slow down. We found that it is difficult to get them out of the habit, but they can with practice," McKoon said.
Researchers uncovered this surprising finding by using a model developed by Ratcliff that considers both the reaction time and the accuracy shown by participants in speeded tasks. Most models only consider one of these variables.
"If you look at aging research, you find some studies that show older people are not impaired in accuracy, but other studies that show that older people do suffer when it comes to speed. What this model does is look at both together to reconcile the results," Ratcliff said.
Ratcliff, McKoon and their colleagues have used several of the same experiments in children, young adults and the elderly.
In one experiment, participants are seated in front of a computer screen. Asterisks appear on the screen and the participants have to decide as quickly as possible whether there is a "small" number (31-50) or a "large" number (51-70) of asterisks. They press one of two keys on the keyboard, depending on their answer.
In another experiment, participants are again seated in front of a computer screen and are shown a string of letters. They have to decide whether those letters are a word in English or not. Some strings are easy (the nonwords are a random string of letters) and some are hard (the nonwords are pronounceable, such as "nerse").
In the Child Development study, the researchers used the asterisk test on second and third graders, fourth and fifth graders, ninth and tenth graders, and college-aged adults. Third graders and college-aged adults participated in the word/nonword test.
The results showed that there was a rise in accuracy and decrease in response time on both tasks from the second and third-graders to the college-age adults.
The younger children took longer than older children and adults to respond in the experiment, Ratcliff said. They, like the elderly, were taking longer to make up their mind. But the younger children were also less accurate than younger adults in this study.
"Younger children are not able to make as good of use of the information they are presented, so they are less accurate," Ratcliff said. "That improves as they mature."
Older adults show a different pattern. In a study published in the journal Cognitive Psychology, Ratcliff and colleagues compared college-age subjects, older adults aged 60-74, and older adults aged 75-90. They used the same asterisk and word/nonword tests that were in the Child Development study. They found that there was little difference in accuracy among the groups, even the oldest of participants.
However, the college students had faster response times than did the 60-74 year olds, who were faster than the 75-90 year olds.
But the slower response times are not all the result of a decline in skills among older adults. In a previous study, the researchers encouraged older adults to go faster on these same tests. When they did, the difference in their response times compared to college-age students decreased significantly.
"For these simple tasks, decision-making speed and accuracy is intact even up to 85 and 90 years old," McKoon said.
That doesn't mean there are no effects of aging on decision-making speed and accuracy, Ratcliff said. In a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Ratcliff, McKoon and another colleague found (like in studies from other laboratories) that accuracy for "associative memory" does decline as people age. For example, older people were much less likely to remember if they had studied a pair of words together than did younger adults.
But Ratcliff said that, overall, their research suggests there should be greater optimism about the cognitive skills of seniors.
"The older view was that all cognitive processes decline at the same rate as people age," Ratcliff said.
"We're finding that there isn't such a uniform decline. There are some things that older people do nearly as well as young people."
Ratcliff co-authored the Child Development paper with Jessica Love and John Opfer of Ohio State and Clarissa Thompson of the University of Oklahoma. Ratcliff and McKoon co-authored the Cognitive Psychology and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General papers with Anjali Thapar of Bryn Mawr College.
Some of the research was supported with grants from the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Mental Health.
News source:medicalxpress

To children (but not adults) a rose by any other name is still a rose

News of science:New research challenges the conventional thinking that young children use language just as adults do to help classify and understand objects in the world around them.
In a new study involving 4- to 5-year-old children, researchers found that the labels adults use to classify items – words like "dog" or "pencil" – don't have the same ability to influence the thinking of children.
"As adults, we know that words are very predictive. If you use words to guide you, they won't often let you down," said Vladimir Sloutsky, co-author of the new study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University and director of the university's Center for Cognitive Science.
"But for children, words are just another feature among many to consider when they're trying to classify an object."
For example, suppose that someone you trust shows you an object that looks like a pen and says that it is a tape recorder, Sloutsky said.
Your first reaction might be to look at the pen to see where the microphone would be hidden, and how you could turn it on or off.
"You might think it was some kind of spy tool, but you would not have a hard time understanding it as a tape recorder even though it looks like a pen," Sloutsky said. "Adults believe words do have a unique power to classify things, but young children don't think the same way."
The results suggest that even after children learn language, it doesn't govern their thinking as much as scientists believed.
"It is only over the course of development that children begin to understand that words can reliably be used to label items," he said.
Sloutsky conducted the study with Wei (Sophia) Deng, a graduate student in psychology at Ohio State. Their research appears online in the journal Psychological Science and will appear in a future print edition.
The study involved two related experiments. One experiment involved 13 preschool children aged 4 to 5 and 30 college-aged adults.
In this first experiment, participants were shown colorful drawings of two fictional creatures that the researchers identified as a "flurp" or a "jalet." Each was distinct in the color and shape of five of their features: body, hands, feet antennae and head. For example, flurps generally had tan-colored square antennae while jalets generally had gray-colored triangle antennae.
The researchers made the heads of the animals particularly salient, or conspicuous: the flurp had a pink head that moved up and down and jalet had a blue head that moved sideways. The head was the only part of the body that moved.
After they learned the relevant characteristics of the flurp and jalet, participants were tested in two conditions. In one condition, they were shown a picture of a creature that had some, but not all of the characteristics of one of the creatures, and asked if it was a flurp or a jalet. In another condition, they were shown a creature where one of the six features was covered and they were asked to predict the missing part.
The critical test came when the participants were shown a creature with a label that matched most of the body parts – except for the very noticeable moving head, which belonged to the other animal. They were then asked which animal was pictured.
"About 90 percent of the children went with what the head told them – even if the label and every other feature suggested the other animal," Sloutsky said.
"The label was just another feature, and it was not as important to them as the most salient feature – the moving head."
Adults put much more stock in the label compared to children– about 37 percent used the label to guide their choice, versus 31 percent who used the moving head. The remaining 31 percent had mixed responses.
However, to eliminate the possibility that participants were confused because they had never heard of flurps and jalets before, the researchers conducted another experiment. The second experiment was similar to the first, except that the animals were given more familiar names: "meat-eaters" and "carrot-eaters" instead of flurps and jalets.
In this case, the difference between the adults and children was even clearer. Nearly two-thirds of adults relied on the label to guide their choices, compared to 18 percent who relied on the moving head and 18 percent who were mixed responders. Only 7 percent of the children relied on the labels, compared to 67 percent who relied on the moving head and 26 percent who were mixed responders.
Sloutsky said these findings add to our understanding of how language affects cognition and may help parents communicate and teach their children.
"In the past, we thought that if we name the things for children, the labels will do the rest: children would infer that the two things that have the same name are alike in some way or that they go together," he said.
"We can't assume that anymore. We really need to do more than just label things."
News source:medicalxpress.

Robert Ader, Who Linked Stress and Illness, Dies at 79

News of science:Dr. Robert Ader, an experimental psychologist who was among the first scientists to show how mental processes influence the body’s immune system, a finding that changed modern medicine, died on Tuesday in Pittsford, N.Y. He was 79.
His death followed a long illness and complications of a fracture suffered in a fall, his daughter Deborah Ader said.
Dr. Ader, who spent his entire career as a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, conducted some of the original experiments in a field he named himself, psychoneuroimmunology.
His initial research, in the 1970s, became a touchstone for studies that have since mapped the vast communications network among immune cells, hormones and neurotransmitters. It introduced a field of research that nailed down the science behind notions once considered magical thinking: that meditation helps reduce arterial plaque; that social bonds improve cancer survival; that people under stress catch more colds; and that placebos work not only on the human mind but also on supposedly insentient cells.
At the core of Dr. Ader’s breakthrough research was an insight already obvious to any grandmother who ever said, “Stop worrying or you’ll make yourself sick.” He demonstrated scientifically that stress worsens illness — sometimes even triggering it — and that reducing stress is essential to health care.
That idea, now widely accepted among medical researchers, contradicted a previous principle of biochemistry, which said that the immune system was autonomous. As late as 1985, the idea of a connection between the brain and the immune system was dismissed in an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine as “folklore.”
“Today there is not a physician in the country who does not accept the science Bob Ader set in motion,” said Dr. Bruce Rabin, founder of the Brain, Behavior and Immunity Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who considered Dr. Ader a mentor. “He attracted interest in the field and made it possible to prove that ‘mind-body’ is real.”
Dr. Ader said his breakthrough began in 1975 with what he called “scientific serendipity.”
He and a fellow researcher, Dr. Nicholas Cohen, were conducting an unrelated experiment about taste aversion involving rats and saccharine-sweetened water when they stumbled on a mysterious phenomenon.
In the experiment, one group of rats was given sweetened water accompanied by an injection that caused stomach aches. (A control group got only the sweetened water.) When the injections stopped, and the rats that had experienced stomach aches refused to drink the water, researchers force-fed them with eye-droppers in order to complete the experiment’s protocols.
Dr. Ader and Dr. Cohen had expected the conditioned rats to refuse the drink. They had not anticipated that forcing them to drink would eventually kill them, however, which it did, some time afterward.
The two reviewed their protocols and guessed that the drugs used in the injections might have had some bearing on the deaths. They could have used any drug that caused stomach pain without doing serious harm. But the researchers discovered that they had unwittingly picked Cytoxan, which besides causing stomach aches suppresses the immune system. At first they suspected that the rats had died from an overdose of Cytoxan. Then they determined that the dosage the rats received had been too low to support that explanation.
So they developed a theory, which became a landmark of medical science as further experiments proved it correct: The rats died because the mere taste of saccharine-laced water was enough to trigger neurological signals that did indeed suppress their immune systems — exactly as if they had been overdosed with Cytoxan. The rats succumbed to bacterial and viral infections they were unable to fight off. It was an example of the so-called placebo effect, only in this case it did not fool the brain into thinking it had been given something beneficial but rather the opposite.
The findings were “incontrovertible,” Anne Harrington, a Harvard professor of the history of science, wrote in the 1997 book “The Placebo Effect.”
“The fact that he had achieved this in rats rather than humans was a further blockbuster,” she continued, “because it undermined the frequent assumption that placebo effects were a product of peculiarly human interpersonal processes.”
Robert Ader was born on Feb. 20, 1932, in the Bronx, the older of two sons of Mae and Nathan Ader. His father, who owned a liquor wholesale company, died in a car accident in 1945 when Robert was a teenager. After graduating from the private Horace Mann School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, he received his bachelor’s degree from Tulane University and, in 1957, his Ph.D. in psychology from Cornell.
Soon after, he became an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Rochester, where he went on to hold many teaching and research posts. He retired in July as a professor emeritus of psychosocial medicine.
Besides his daughter Deborah, he is survived by his wife, Gayle; three other daughters, Janet, Rini and Leslie Ader; and a grandson.
Since he inaugurated the study of psychoneuroimmunology (usually referred to as PNI), Dr. Ader had to defend its premise against doubters in the medical establishment and later to disassociate it from New Age therapies that he called “flaky” because they had not been grounded in solid scientific experimentation.
Deborah Ader, a psychology researcher, said a sense of modesty had been at the core of her father’s curiosity as a scientist.
“My father used to say, ‘I just didn’t know any better,’ ” she said, recounting how he had described his pioneering research.
He told her, she recalled, “I didn’t know the immune system wasn’t supposed to be connected to the brain.”
News source:nytimes