Category Archives: Uncategorized

Women with Eating Disorders draw a different picture of themselves

Posted on February 15, 2011 by | 3 comments

An Article posted on ScienceDaily is very interesting as it goes into talking about women who have eating disorders. There is a study conducted at the University of Haifa in Israel. There is the comparison of women who suffer from anorexia and bulimia to two different groups of women; women who had no eating disorders but were overweight, and women  who had no eating disorders and were normal weight. A research conducted was for 76 women to ”complete two standardized questionnaires for screening eating disorders and were then asked to draw themselves” (Guez et al 2010).

The results were correlating as women who suffered from anorexia and bulimia drew their respective body parts differently. As stated in the ScienceDaily the following results were obtained

”

  • The neck: women suffering from anorexia or bulimia tended to draw a larger neck, a disconnected neck or no neck at all;
  • The mouth: this feature was more emphasized in drawings by women suffering from anorexia or bulimia;
  • The thighs: women with eating disorders drew wider thighs than the other groups in the study;
  • The feet: women with eating disorders tended to draw pictures without feet or with disconnected feet.

This allowed researchers to summarize that women with anorexia and bulimia ” tended to omit breasts from their drawings, drew less defined body lines and smaller figures relative to the page size” (Guez et al 2010).

Here is an image of the women drawings.

For more information go to the direct link

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110214102124.htm

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That Lovin’ Feeling

Posted on February 11, 2011 by | 1 comment

On Monday next week, the theme will be all about love. 

This feeling of love has been tied to more then just getting that butterfly sensation in your stomach. Love can now be described at a neurochemical level. Research  is explaining love thanks to a little chemical called dopamine.

Dopamine neurones account for less than 1% of the total neuronal population in the brain, but have great effect on its function (Mardeson, 2006). It is involved in the control of movement and the modivation for reward. Deficiency in this neurotransmitter is tied to such diseases as Parkinsons ( Mardeson, 2006).

Dopamine has also been found to be relevant to the social pairing of males and females in long and short term relationships (Curtis et al, 2006). I have friends who talk about how their relationships have changed from fun and amazing to boring and dull. It amazes me that such a transition could be due to a lack of dopamine stimulation. But fear not, this isn’t the outcome for every relationship. Discovery News has reported on a study done by Arthur Aron (a social neuroscientist at Stony Brook University in New York) and his colleagues who have found that people in long term relationships who are madly in love are not lying and that this feeling can last!

The study took 17 people who felt that they were in long term loving relationships. MRI brain-scans were done while they looked at photos of their lover and of strangers (who had similar features). Their scans were similar to those of  recently fallen in love people by having a high activity in the region of the brain which processes dopamine. There was also high activity in regions related to pair-bonding and attachment.Also when comparing scans of people in long term relationships who did not rate their feeling of love as highly as to those who do, had lower levels of activity in the dopamine processing portion of the brain. This little neurotransmitter has powerful affects on our emotions, feelings and relationships. Could a little boost in producing dopamine keep us all on clould 9?

So when you give a Valentine’s Day card this Monday, that feeling you get may not be so fleeting!

  • 1.Marsden, C. A. (2006). Dopamine: The rewarding years. British Journal of Pharmacology, 147(S1), S136-S144. doi:10.1038/sj.bjp.0706473
  • 2.Curtis, J. T., Liu, Y., Wang, Z., & Aragona, B. J. (2006). Dopamine and monogamy. Brain Research, 1126(1), 76-90. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2006.07.126

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Fun!, General, Science in the News, Uncategorized

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Aerobic Exercise Boosts Memory

Posted on January 31, 2011 by | 3 comments

As midterms are quickly approaching, many of us are trying to retain and cram as much information as we can into our brains. If it hasn’t already become apparent, most of us will realize that our brains can only store a limited amount of information. Fortunately, there appears to be a way to expand and boost our memory, and that is simply through aerobic exercises.

Image from: www.runningrules.com

In a recent article published by Science News (which can be found here), they reported a study that was highlighted in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In this study, scientists discovered that adults who frequently performed aerobic exercise activities such as walking developed an increase in hippocampus volume. The hippocampus, which is a memory centre in the brain, normally decreases in size with age, however in the study the reversed occurred. They also found that the members had higher levels of Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which is a brain-aiding molecule.

Image from: www.library.thinkquest.org

Wikipedia article on the hippocampus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus

Wikipedia article on Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDNF

The study compared two different groups of adults aged 60 to 80. In one group, the adults did toning workouts such as weight training and yoga sessions for a year. While in the other group, the adults consistenly walked for three times a week. After a year, the group which simply did toning showed normal results, which consisted of some of the test subjects observing a decrease in hippocampus volume. On the other hand, the group that did a year of aerobic exercises observed roughly a 2 percent increase in anterior hippocampus volume.

If adults aged 60 to 80 can develop increases in the hippocampus by up to 2 percent, it begs the question of whether a younger study group would develop an even larger increase in their hippocampus. Hence, this study should be expanded to include a more diverse age group. Furthermore, why should the study stop there? They could also include teenagers, children, and possibly toddlers as well. Perhaps they might discover that people that have superior memory got that way by doing a lot of aerobic exercise during their childhood. It would also be interesting to understand why and how this process occurs. This is definitely a fascinating area of research, and it has great implications. It shows that exercise not only benefits the body, but the brain as well. So it is in everyone’s interest to maintain a healthy lifestyle and to keep fit.

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Posted in Biological Sciences, New and innovative science, Uncategorized

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“Do bugs need drugs?” How about pigs?

Posted on January 28, 2011 by | Comments Off on “Do bugs need drugs?” How about pigs?

Small cuts and bruises are not much of a concern to present-day people. After all, they’re “just a scratch”; if they cause complications later on, the doctor can prescribe some drugs to fix them right up. Unfortunately, society might not be able to afford to keep such carefree attitudes to small injuries in the near future. With the emergence of “super bugs”, bacteria with high resistance to antibiotics, treatments for bacterial infections are becoming increasingly less effective. Over the years, the widespread use of antibiotics to cure minor injuries and infections have been selectively making bacteria stronger against common prescription drugs.

However, doctors are not the only cause for the rise of super bugs. In a recent study, Ludek Zurek et al. (2011) found that intestinal bacteria in the pigs of animal farms are very antibiotic resistant. This is almost certainly the result of farmers routinely adding antibiotics into swine feed to use as both a growth promoter and a defence against harmful bacteria and parasites. Already, several strands of the gut bacteria are immune to multiple types of antibiotics.

Although bacteria in pork is not dangerous as long as the meat is properly cooked, Zurek’s research suggests that infectious bacteria may be indirectly transferred to humans from pigs through insect carriers. In the same study, the researchers found that house flies and German cockroaches, which both feed on pig feces, have the same antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains. Through these commonplace insects, disease can potentially transfer from the pigs to humans.

The consequences of using antibiotics in animal farms is two-fold. The immediate effect is encouraging bacteria to evolve into more antibiotic resistant variants, and thereby making bacterial diseases more difficult to treat. Antibiotic use in farms also poses the danger of new infectious super bugs being transferred to humans by insect carriers such as house flies and German cockroaches. The use of antibiotic-containing swine feed should be reviewed to determine if the benefits outweigh these repercussions.

References:
Aqeel Ahmad, Anuradha Ghosh, Coby Schal and Ludek Zurek. Insects in confined swine operations carry a large antibiotic resistant and potentially virulent enterococcal community. BMC Microbiology, (in press)

BioMed Central (2011, January 27). Household bugs: A risk to human health?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 28, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2011/01/110126081706.htm

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