learn to live longer
Do we have a choice to extend our life spanIJ The answer is probably “no.” But the choice to live beyond 100 is in our hands. lifestyle, more than anything else, has had the most dramatic effect on one’s life expectancy, no matter what our genetic inheritance is from ancestors. According to Dr Bill Faloon, publisher of life Extension magazine, the single most significant piece of knowledge he has ever learned was the fact that it is our food choices that determine whether we can become well or ill. In short, the wrong food choices can increase the risk of cancer or cardiovascular problems.
Signs of depression in animals
In the July issue of Scientific American, anthropologist Barbara King of The College of William & Mary makes the case that animals ranging from ducks to dolphins may grieve when a relative or close companion dies. In doing so she departs from a long-standing tradition among animal behaviorists of assiduously avoiding projecting human emotions onto other animals. Not all animal responses to death qualify as mourning, however. King is careful to establish criteria for grief, noting that “researchers may strongly suspect grief only when certain conditions are met: First, two (or more) animals choose to spend time together beyond survival-oriented behaviours such as foraging or mating. Second, when one animal dies, the survivor alters his or her normal behavioral routine — perhaps reducing the amount of time devoted to eating or sleeping, adopting a body posture or facial expression indicative of depression or agitation, or generally failing to thrive.”
Birds sleep like humans do
Baby birds have sleep patterns similar to baby mammals, and their sleep changes in the same way when growing up. This is what a team from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and the University of lausanne found out working with barn owls in the wild. The team also discovered that this change in sleep was strongly correlated with the expression of a gene involved in producing dark, melanic feather spots, a trait known to covary with behavioral and physiological traits in adult owls. These findings raise the intriguing possibility that sleep-related developmental processes in the brain contribute to the link between melanism and other traits observed in adult barn owls and other animals.
Women and anxiety
The lifetime rate of diagnosis of anxiety disorders is higher in women, with 33 per cent experiencing an anxiety disorder in their lifetime, as compared with 22 per cent of men. Experts believe this difference arises from a combination of hormonal fluctuations, brain chemistry and upbringing: women more often feel responsible for the happiness of others, such as their children or their spouse.
Money matters
Recent research suggests that for some people, childhood conditions not only shape our spending decisions, but cause some people to spend more impulsively in times of a recession. This is the suggestion of recent research led by Vladas Griskevecius from the University of Minnesota and Joshua Ackerman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In a series of studies, they found that, ironically, people raised in an environment low in economic resources make riskier and less conservative choices when reminded of recessions, regardless of their current economic status. In an initial study, half of participants were shown a series of images related to the recession (for example, pictures of home foreclosure signs or unemployment signs) while the other half viewed more neutral images.