Women longing for a baby advised to opt for ugly men

Handsome men who are lucky in love may not be the best bet as a mate for women hoping to get pregnant, researchers have said.

Uglier men with fewer notches on their belts are likely to be more productive between the sheets, it is claimed.

Research suggests that in many species, the most desirable males restrict their "sperm load" with each mating to ensure enough to go around.

The same could be true of humans and other primates, say scientists.

If they are right, women looking for the best chance of getting pregnant might be advised to avoid handsome lotharios.

The theory proposes that males have evolved to look for the optimum "sperm load" per mating.

This varies depending on how many available females there are to mate with, and what the chances of mating with them are.

Males with the opportunity to mate with a lot of females would be likely to produce less sperm on each occasion than those making fewer sexual conquests.

A smaller "sperm load" reduces the chances of any individual female getting pregnant. However, this is outweighed by the fact that many different females can be impregnated.

Such a trade-off is seen in the wild and has been observed in chickens and fish.

Researchers modelled the concept of "spreading sperm" mathematically in a paper to be published in the journal American Naturalist.

One member of the team, PhD student Sam Tazzyman, from the Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life sciences and Experimental biology (CoMPLEX) at University College London, said: "In some species, females mate with many different males. Each male's sperm competes with that of other males in a process known as 'sperm competition'. Since males have finite resources to allocate to breeding, they allocate them carefully to each mating to maximise their number of offspring.

"If a male puts a lot of resources into each mating he will get more offspring per mating, but at the expense of fewer matings. If, on the other hand, a male puts few resources into each mating he will secure less paternity per mating, but will be able to carry out more matings overall. Thus, there is a trade-off between number of matings and success per mating.

"How a male negotiates this trade-off depends on how easy he finds it to attract females. The more attractive a male is, the more females will be willing to mate with him, reducing the value of each mating to him.

This means it is optimal for him to contribute fewer sperm per mating. Although this reduces fertility per mating, it maximises the number of offspring he sires overall. Less attractive males secure fewer matings but value each of them more highly, and by allocating more sperm to each mating make the most of their meagre opportunities.

"This leads to the rather paradoxical prediction that matings with attractive males may be less fertile than those with unattractive males."

Whether or not the same principle applied to humans and other primates was still unknown, said the researchers – but there every possibility that it did.

"Human attractiveness is complicated and influenced by a number of factors, including cultural preferences," said Mr Tazzyman.

"Nonetheless, ejaculate size and sperm quality are likely to have been moulded by similar forces, like attractiveness and the number of sexual partners, that are important in other species."

Why women can wear high heels for hours 'solved by scientists'

Women who claim they can wear high heels all day but only experience pain when they take them off can prevent the problem by using a simple exercise technique, according to scientists.

Researchers found women who regularly wore high heels for extended periods suffered more aches because their muscles were overstretched and could not relax.

They found that wearing a pair of shoes shortened fibres in their calve muscles as the heel of the foot was elevated.

The scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University then discovered the Achilles' tendon became thicker and stiffer meaning it was harder to stretch the feet out to walk.

They said it could explain why women could wear high heels for hours but experience feet aches after removing them.

In their study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the team used volunteers aged between 20 and 50 who had regularly worn 5cm high heels for two years or more.

They tested a final group of 11 who felt uncomfortable walking without their heels and recruited a second group of women who did not wear high heels.

Using ultrasound to measure the length of muscle fibres in the women's calf muscles, they found high heel wearers were 13 per cent shorter than those who wore flat shoes.

"This confirmed the hypothesis that when you place the muscle in a shorter position, the fibres become shorter,” said Prof Marco Narici, who led the study.

"We found the Achilles' tendon was the same length in the two groups, but in women who wore high heels it was much thicker and stiffer, making it harder for them to stretch their feet out when they were on the flat."

But this problem can be overcome by doing simple stretching exercises throughout the day.

"If you stand on your tip toes and lower your heels up and down again it will stretch out the tendons making it easier to walk without heels,” he said.

“If you do this about 20 times a day it should be sufficient to prevent this happening.”

www.telegraph.co.uk

Scientists prove that women are better at multitasking than men

Psychologists have proven that men really are worse at multitasking than women, although it does depend on the task.

It is an age old complaint - that men are incapable of doing more than one thing at once.

Researchers decided to test the truth of the commonly held belief after discovering that no scientific research had ever been done into it.

They found that when women and men work on a number of simple tasks - such as searching for a key or doing easy maths problems - at the same time, the women significantly outperformed the men.

Scientists believe that the results show that females are better able to reflect upon a problem, while continuing to juggle their other commitments, than men.

Professor Keith Laws, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, who led the research, said: "We have all heard stories that either men can't multitask or that women are exceptionally good at multitasking.

"But there didn't appear to be any empirical evidence for this. It was all based upon folklore and hearsay when I looked through the scientific literature."

Prof. Laws gave 50 male and 50 female students eight minutes to perform three tasks at the same time: carrying out simple maths problems, finding restaurants on a map and sketching a strategy for how they would search for a lost key in an imaginary field.

As they performed the tasks, the volunteers also received a phone call that they could either chose to answer or not. If they did answer, they were given an additional general knowledge test while they continued to carry out their other activities.

While women were able to preform well in all four activities at once, men performed, on average, worse when it came to planning to search for the key.

Professor Laws said: "Men are supposed to have better spatial awareness than women, so they should have outperformed the women on the map task and the key task.

"But of all the tasks we gave, the key searching task also requires planning and some kind of strategy.

"Men tended to start their search in a less logical place such as the centre of the field and they would not cover the whole area when they were outlining their search. women tended to enter in one corner and search in concentric circles or lines.

"It shows that women are better at being able to stand back and reflect for a moment while they are juggling other things."

www.telegraph.co.uk

Women have better memories than men, say scientists

WOMEN'S brains function better at remembering information than men's, researchers have confirmed.

A Cambridge University study of 4407 men and women from East Anglia, southeastern England, discovered gender plays a clear difference in memory function.

In tests on participants aged between 48 to 90 years, women made an average of 5.9 fewer errors than men, regardless of age.

Education was also found to play a significant part in memory function.

Participants who left education after the age of 18 were found to make an average of 20 fewer total errors than those who left education before the age of 16.

“Although the links between sex and education and cognitive function have been explored before, this very large dataset provides striking evidence that these factors play a major role in determining how good our memory function is as we age," Dr Andrew Blackwell, Chief Scientific Officer at Cambridge University's Department of Psychiatry, said.

“Using these data, we can determine whether or not an individual’s memory function is normal or not for people of their age, sex and education level.

“A body of scientific literature has demonstrated that women typically outperform men on test of verbal function, whereas men tend to outperform women on tasks of spatial function.

"However, in this study, we used a measure of memory that is spatial and women consistently outperformed men.

“There are many possible explanations for this, including both neurobiological and environmental differences.”

Researchers hoped the findings may help scientists further understand the causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

Further research was planned and it was estimated that the final study will reach approximately 10,000 participants.

www.theaustralian.com.au

Sea levels rising in parts of Indian Ocean, according to new study

Greenhouse gases are playing a role in changes, say scientists

Newly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean, including the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java, appear to be at least partly a result of human-induced increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases, says a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The study, which combined sea surface measurements going back to the 1960s and satellite observations, indicates anthropogenic climate warming likely is amplifying regional sea rise changes in parts of the Indian Ocean, threatening inhabitants of some coastal areas and islands, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Weiqing Han, lead study author. The sea level rise -- which may aggravate monsoon flooding in Bangladesh and India -- could have far-reaching impacts on both future regional and global climate.

The key player in the process is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, an enormous, bathtub-shaped area of the tropical oceans stretching from the east coast of Africa west to the International Date Line in the Pacific. The warm pool has heated by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees Celsius, in the past 50 years, primarily caused by human-generated increases of greenhouse gases, said Han.

"Our results from this study imply that if future anthropogenic warming effects in the Indo-Pacific warm pool dominate natural variability, mid-ocean islands such as the Mascarenhas Archipelago, coasts of Indonesia, Sumatra and the north Indian Ocean may experience significantly more sea level rise than the global average," said Han of CU-Boulder's atmospheric and oceanic sciences department.

What's the secret to running and swimming faster? The position of your belly button, say scientists

The reason why black people make better sprinters and white people dominate swimming races has been explained by scientists - it's down to their belly buttons.

Whether it sticks in or out is not relevant but researchers found that the position of the navel in relation to the rest of their body affects athletic ability. This is because the naval is the body's centre of gravity.

A higher naval means a higher centre of gravity - so your body is pulled forward faster - while a lower navel means a longer torso which makes for a better swimmer.

The researchers say their findings prove why black people are more likely to sprint faster while white people make swifter swimmers.

Duke University professor Andre Bejan, the lead author of the study published in the International Journal of Design and Nature and Ecodynamics, explains: 'What matters is not total height but the position of the belly-button, or centre of gravity.

'It so happens that in the architecture of the human body of West African-origin runners, the centre of gravity is significantly higher than in runners of European origin which puts them at an advantage in sprints on the track.

'Individuals of West African-origin have longer legs than European-origin athletes, which means their belly-buttons are three centimeters (1.18 inches) higher than whites.'

That means the black athletes have a "hidden height" that is three percent greater than whites', which gives them a significant speed advantage on the track.

Professor Bejan adds: 'Locomotion is essentially a continual process of falling forward, and mass that falls from a higher altitude, falls faster.'

In the pool, meanwhile, whites have the advantage because they have longer torsos, so their belly-buttons sit lower on the body.

Swimming is the art of surfing the wave created by the swimmer,' said Prof Bejan. 'The swimmer who makes the bigger wave is the faster swimmer, and a longer torso makes a bigger wave. Europeans have a three-percent longer torso than West Africans, which gives them a 1.5-percent speed advantage in the pool,' he said.

Asians have the same long torsos as Europeans, giving them the same potential to be record-breakers in the pool.

But they often lose out to whites because whites are taller, said Prof Bejan.

Many scientists have avoided studying why blacks make better sprinters and whites better swimmers because of what the study calls the "obvious" race angle.

But Prof Bejan said the study he conducted with Edward Jones, a professor at Howard University in Washington, and Duke graduate Jordan Charles, focused on the athletes' geographic origins and biology, not race, which the authors of the study call a "social construct."

They charted and analyzed nearly 100 years of records in men's and women's sprinting and 100-meters freestyle swimming for the study.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Tourists beware: London voted 'Europe's worst city for food'

London is the worst place in Europe to find something tasty to eat, a new Europe-wide survey has found.

In fact, Britain is the last place you should visit if you're looking for good food, according to the travel poll - Liverpool was voted as having the second-worst cuisine and Birmingham the third worst.

Although our capital city was voted the most exciting European city, it was also considered the most expensive and there was bad news for Birmingham too, which was voted the second-most unattractive city, with Krakow in Poland being the least attractive.

However, London was considered the easiest city to get around and having been voted the dirtiest city in a similar survey last year, it was considered one of the cleaner cities this year.
London was also rated the third-safest city, with the Swiss cities of Geneva and Zurich taking the top two positions in the poll by TripAdvisor.

Rome was considered to have the best cuisine and the Italian capital was also voted the most attractive and the worst to get around.

The most dangerous city was Istanbul, the cleanest was Zurich, the best value was Lisbon and the dirtiest was Athens.

TripAdvisor spokesman Emma O'Boyle said: 'Europe's cities all have their highs and lows, but it's great that London has been crowned the most exciting.

'And with the London Olympics only two years away it's encouraging to see the fundamental issues of safety and transport already scoring highly with visitors.'

Sally Chatterjee, CEO of Visit London, said: 'We're delighted that London has been voted the most exciting city in Europe.

'Whilst old perceptions remain about British cuisine, they don't reflect the reality which is that London is now home to the best chefs and restaurants on the planet.

'The hugely successful London Restaurant Festival was a big hit with Londoners and visitors alike last year and will hit the same heights again this autumn.'

www.dailymail.co.uk

The incredible 'bendy bicycle': British designer, 21, invents a bike you can FOLD around a lamp post

A young designer has invented a revolutionary folding bicycle that will stop thieves in their tracks.

Kevin Scott, 21, designed the space-age bike that wraps around a lamp post so it can be locked-up safely - without the need for a lock or chain.

The De Montfort University graduate used a ratchet system built into the frame of the bike to allow it to wrap around a pole, enabling the lock to be wrapped through both wheels and the frame.

Securing all the bike's components within the lock was his aim in creating the new bike. It also allows the bike to be stored in small spaces.

The frame can be ratcheted tight to allow the bike to be ridden like a normal bike, but it can be quickly loosened to allow the frame to be bent back on itself.



As such, finding a spot to lock it up on London's busy streets is a cinch - you simply wrap it around the nearest lamppost.


Mr Scott's creation is currently on show at the New Designers show at the Business Design Centre in Islington, north London.


He is hoping that his unusual cycle will catch the eye of a bike loving backer who will enable him to develop it further.


More than 52 bikes are stolen in London every day, according to official figures.
A total of 23,748 bikes were reported stolen in London in 2009-10 — up 27.8 per cent on the previous financial year — but police believe that the true figure could be double that.


Experts recommend that users should spend around 10 per cent of their bike's value on a decent lock  - ideally two - and always lock it to a solid object through the frame.




 

www.dailymail.co.uk

Study: Fish-oil supplements may cut breast-cancer risk

Fish-oil supplements may lower your risk of breast cancer, according to a newly published study, but don't run out and stock up on pills quite yet.

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center surveyed more than 35,000 postmenopausal women in Western Washington and found that those who took omega-3 fish-oil supplements had a 32 percent lower incidence of breast cancer, but senior author Emily White doesn't recommend that women begin taking the highly touted capsules.

"The evidence is intriguing, but it's not definitive," said White, a University of Washington epidemiologist.
The survey-based study targeted people already taking supplements, which may introduce a bias.
"Supplement users may have healthier lifestyles," she said. "Or they may have other underlying health conditions."

To confirm the cancer-fighting benefits of fatty-acid supplements, researchers would need a rigorous and costly randomized clinical trial comparing fish-oil pills and placebos.

This would also reveal any potential side effects of taking omega-3 supplements, which contain five to 10 times more fatty acids than are naturally found in a serving of fish.

10 Ways to Be a More Positive Person

We are all feeling uncertain these days. Rather than give in to fear and worry, it is important to learn new ways to cope with change and invite inspiration and positivity into our every day.

Emotions run high when our lives are in crisis and when the world seems to be teetering on the edge. Developing new coping skills and practices is a priority. In every challenge you face is the hidden opportunity to create a new life filled with more possibilities and value then we ever had before.

Here are ten strategies to help you see the potential for joy, security and the realization of your dreams regardless of any current struggles.

 

1. Re-establish Your Priorities

Most of us were raised to have a certain approach to the future, planning for long-term security, etc. These days, a new attitude is essential. Focusing on the immediate priorities of family, health and managing finances is where our energies are best spent.

 

While planning a positive future helps us create new things to look forward to, living “one day at a time” is truly the best way to move past any chaos you may be facing and change your life for the better. No moment is as important as this one.

 

2. Surround Yourself with Positive People

There are people around us everyday who, in spite of their circumstances, forge ahead and find ways to approach each day with optimism and excitement.

 

Find new ways to interact in your community and you will connect with people you may not have noticed before. You may have fewer friends, but the ones you do have will lift you up and inspire you daily.

 

3. Broaden Your Perspective

Make an effort to find role models who are living the life you seek. There are thousands of examples worldwide of people who most certainly have suffered more and yet have found a wondrous and blessed life.

 

They leave clues that can work just as well for you in own life. If you cannot find them among people you know, seek their stories in media, movies, and books.

 

4. Do Something You Love Everyday

Everyone has something that they love so much it can help them get through tough times. Personally, music helps me cope. Listening to music fills my soul, reminds me what I care about and gives me the motivation I need to pursue my life with focus, enthusiasm and humility.

 

Choose something that does not require effort or motivation, and simply makes you happy. It will lift your mood, energize you and motivate you to take on the struggles of your day.

 

5. Offer to Serve Others

Regardless of how dark things might be in your life, give your time, attention and resources in any way you can to others. Working with children, the elderly, or others in need can provide relief from your own struggles.

 

It can make you feel useful and part of a bigger community. Isolating yourself is paralyzing. So connect and give, even if it only briefly. Service diminishes depression, helplessness and provides hope to you and to those you help in a deeply meaningful way.

 

6. Stay Organized

When things get difficult it is very easy to lose track of everything. Time, paperwork, schedules, appointments and even people all seem to fall into a black hole, simply adding to our frustration. Don’t let chaos become your new best friend.

 

Stay clear and keep your life, professionally and personally, well organized. Nothing is more draining than spending hours trying to find something essential that has been misplaced, or reestablish connections that have been damaged due to living our lives in havoc.

 

7. Get Up and Move

While exercise is ideal and essential at all times, during periods of emotional stress it is more important than ever to move our bodies. Research is clear that moving our body releases chemicals that make it easier to cope with stress and loss. A simple walk or light exercise can work wonders to keep your mood elevated and your focus clear.

 

8. Forgive Yourself

Let yourself off the hook if things are not going as you had planned in life. Your finances and circumstances may have changed drastically, but if you can find new opportunities in the darkness, you will discover a new life you will cherish even more.

 

Most challenges bring wonderful new potential we could not have foreseen. If you allow yourself to let go of what has happened and give yourself permission to look for a new and different life, you may find that everything is happening for a reason and you can then embrace a new path.

 

9. Build a Core Support Circle to Help

Make sure you have people around you who can be available to help with any urgent needs. Creating a group of experts, family and friends who will be there when you need advice, financial assistance, time alone, or spiritual and emotional support is crucial during challenging times.

 

Move beyond a social circle and start building a supportive community that you and your family you can depend on.

 

10. Open Yourself to the Possibility of a New Reality

Recent times have been marked by losses on many levels –jobs, finances, homes, relationships, stability, people and places we love. As tragic as things may seem at the outset, loss could lead to a magical opportunity to change your life in ways you never thought possible.

 

Give yourself permission to create a completely new vision of how your life might look. Whether it is your career, your lifestyle and or any other fundamental part of your life, it can be exciting and invigorating to embrace a new reality that you would not have considered before. We can’t control the journey but we can always control how we experience the journey.

 

So focus on how you feel and on the people you value in your life and not on what is happening to you. As a result, you will feel empowered and inspired each day to remain the architect of your own destiny.

 

Compiled from: beliefnet.com

Women enjoy best sex as they approach 40

Women have higher sex drives in their thirties and early forties than in their younger years because they fear their "biological clock" is ticking, researchers claim.

Despite the fact their bodies may be in decline, women are more likely to have sexual fantasies and affairs as they approach 40, a study showed.

Experts said that as women approach the milestone they may sense that their "window of opportunity" to have children is closing and their fertility is declining.

 

Their instinctual reaction is an increased appetite for sex, the researchers said, an explanation which could explain the rise of the "cougar" – a woman who seeks out flings with younger partners.


The survey of nearly 900 women divided respondents into three groups: those at their most fertile (aged 19 to 26), those whose fertility was declining (aged 27 to 45) and those who were approaching or had reached the menopause.

Those in the middle group were significantly more sexually driven, engaging in sex and having sexual fantasies more often than their older and younger counterparts and being more likely to have flings.

Professor David Buss said: "Results indicate women with declining fertility have greater sexual motivations and increased sexual behaviours than do women with relatively high fertility.

"These findings lend further support to the influence of the biological clock on women's mating psychology to facilitate conception before the window of opportunity closes."

Dr Pam Spurr, an expert in sex and behaviour, told the Daily Mail: "I often find it is women in their late thirties who seem to be having a lot of fun. There might be a subconscious level to this but also a conscious one – women are more informed about fertility levels falling after a certain age."

The research, by academics from the University of Texas, was published in the journal Personality And Individual Differences.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Big burgers 'should be dropped' as risk to jaw, warn Taiwan's dentists

Taiwanese dentists have urged fast food chains to drop over-sized burgers from their menus following a growing number of jaw injury cases.

Patients have developed sore jaws or had difficulties opening their mouths after consuming giant burgers, said Professor Hsu Ming-lun of the School of Dentistry at National Yang-Ming University in Taiwan.



Problems can arise when fast-food fans tuck into hamburgers larger than three inches high, Mr Hsu said, according to the China Post.
 
A human mouth is designed to gape over objects measuring up to one-and-a-half inches, the professor said. Overextending can hurt the joint between the jawbone and the temporal bone in front of the ears, he said.
 
Source: telegraph.co.uk

Psychic octopus backs Spain to win World Cup 2010

Paul, the psychic octopus, has picked Spain to beat Holland in the World Cup final. The who has rightly predicted six games in a row at the 2010 World Cup,

 

'One third of young women check Facebook when they first wake up'

One third of women aged 18 to 34 check Facebook when they first wake up, before even going to the toilet, according to new research. 

Young women are becoming increasingly addicted and dependent upon social networks according to a study conducted by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research. 

The study polled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June 2010 in an effort to chart behavioural trends. 

Twenty-one per cent of women aged between 18 to 34 check Facebook in the middle of the night, while 42 per cent of the same group think it is fine to post drunken photos of themselves onto the social network. Seventy-nine per cent are also happy to be seen kissing in photographs posted on Facebook. 


Fifty-eight per cent of those polled use Facebook to track their ‘frenemies’ (people they are ‘friends’ on the site but do not like in real life) and 50 per cent are happy being Facebook ‘friends’ with complete strangers. 

Sixty-three per cent use Facebook as a networking tool and an increasing number are using the site to find dates. Sixty-five per cent men were comfortable with dating people they had met on Facebook, whereas only 50 per cent of women felt the same. 

Nine per cent of women have used the network to break up with their partners compared to the 24 per cent of men who have used the site in the same way. While 49 per cent of women believe it is alright to track their partner’s activities by having their login details, and only 42 per cent of men share the same view. 

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, believes people do not want complete privacy online anymore. Speaking to Time magazine in May, Zuckerberg said: “The way that people think about privacy is changing a bit. What people want isn’t complete privacy. It isn’t that they want secrecy. It’s that they want control over what they share and what they don't. 

“Our core belief is that one of the most transformational things in this generation is that there will be more information available.... Even with all the progress that we've made, I think we're much closer to the beginning than the end of the trend." 

In the Time interview, Zuckerberg played down the fact that millions of people have recently had concerns about Facebook’s privacy settings – comparing the situation to when the site launched its News Feed service in 2006. “We only had 10 million users at the time and one million were complaining. Now to think there wouldn’t be a news feed in insane… That’s a big part of what we do, figuring out what the next things are that everyone wants to do and them bringing them along to get them there. 

Concerns about privacy on the site were running so high that 60 per cent of the 1,588 Facebook users questioned by Sophos, a computer security organisation, in May, said that they were considering deleting their accounts on the social networking site. 

A further 16 per cent said they had already stopped using Facebook because they felt they had inadequate control over their data, while a quarter said that they would not be quitting the social networking site, which has almost 500 million users worldwide. 

Facebook then bowed to pressure and unveiled a raft of changes to their privacy settings. 

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Why your brain is hardwired for fattening foods

Researchers offer ways to kick your sweet tooth to the curb

Doughnuts possess superpowers. They tempt you from the break room. Even though you ate breakfast, their sweet, buttery smell envelops you, urging you to take a nibble. You plan to split a glazed with your cubemate, but before you can say "Krispy Kreme," you've devoured an entire cruller and returned to your desk feeling guilty and stuffed. But baked goods don't deserve all the blame for derailing your diet. They have a partner in crime: your brain. 

That's right. Your brain, not your stomach, is what makes you desire sugary, fatty splurges such as brownies and french fries. And recently, the mind-craving connection has become a hot topic among researchers, resulting in new insights into how to resist treats and stay slim.

The main cravings culprit is a system of interconnected neurons called the reward pathway that evolved over millions of years to encourage prehistoric you to do things that kept you alive, like eating. High-calorie food was scarce and crucial for survival, so your brain learned to flood itself with feel-good chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin in response to tastes, smells and even people or places it linked with rich grub. 

This effect pushed you to eat when such bounty was available. Water, veggies and other plant food were easy for your cavewoman self to locate, which is why today you're less inclined to pig out on produce, says Nora Volkow, M.D., an addiction researcher and director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Maryland. The system worked well until modern times, when high-fat, high-calorie eats became available 24/7. 

A better measure of what to consume and when: true hunger, your body's biological request for nourishment, which comes straight from the belly. When you need energy, your stomach dispatches ghrelin, the hunger hormone, to the hypothalamus, your brain's command center for metabolism. As a result, you look for food. Then, when you're full, your fat cells release leptin, which signals that it's time to drop your fork. 

But as any chocoholic knows, a desire for dessert can get you to take a bite and keep eating however full you might be, especially if you're stressed or tired. The key to overcoming thousands of years of evolutionary biology and finally kicking your sweet tooth to the curb? Tweaking your habits to outsmart the system that sends you in search of junk. We promise — there's kryptonite for those doughnuts yet.

Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

New Anti-HIV Weapons Found in Immune System

THURSDAY, July 8 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists report they've discovered possible new weapons in the war against HIV: antibody "soldiers" in the immune system that might prevent the AIDS virus from invading human cells.

According to the researchers, these newly found antibodies connect with and neutralize more than 90 percent of a group of HIV-1 strains, involving all major genetic subtypes of the virus.

That breadth of activity could potentially move research closer toward development of an HIV vaccine, although that goal still remains years away, at best, experts say.

The findings "show that the immune system can make very potent antibodies against HIV," said Dr. John Mascola, a vaccine researcher and co-author of two new studies published online July 8 in the journal Science.

"We are trying to understand why they exist in some patients and not others. That will help us in the vaccine design process," said Mascola.

Antibodies are warriors in the body's immune system that work to prevent infection. "Neutralizing" antibodies bind to germs and try to disable them, explained Ralph Pantophlet, an immunologist and assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

With HIV, the antibodies are in a continual race to adjust to the virus, which evolves to escape detection. "The reason the antibodies generally do not work so well is because they're always playing catch up," said Pantophlet, who is familiar with the findings of the new studies.

However, some people's antibodies are known to cope especially well with HIV, although even these rare patients can't get rid of the virus entirely, Pantophlet said.

In the new studies, researchers report on three antibodies that appear to have major powers to fight off HIV. In a sense, the antibodies gum up a lock that the virus tries to pick to get into healthy cells, said Mascola, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the U.S. National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

However, making antibodies in large enough quantities to boost the immune system remains a challenge, said Pantophlet.

While researchers haven't given up on that prospect, some think it's more feasible to use the new findings as another avenue to an AIDS vaccine. The idea would be to teach the body to produce the antibodies so the person is protected when exposed to the virus, Mascola said.

But that won't happen for some time, if at all. "Developing a vaccine always takes a fairly long period of research with some trial and error," Mascola said.

"The goal is to vaccinate individuals and have their own immune systems make an antibody like this," he said. "To do that, we have to design a new vaccine, study it first in animal models, and then try it in small scale human studies, and see if it does what we expect it to do. That takes a quite a bit of time and effort."

Source: healthday.com

10 Big Differences Between Men’s and Women’s Brains

The differences between women and men are not only well-documented, but frequently at the heart of jokes, anecdotes, and good-natured (and not so good-natured) ribbing. Experts have discovered that there are actually differences in the way women’s and men’s brains are structured and in the way they react to events and stimuli. So the next time your wife, boyfriend, or parent starts telling you how you should have done something differently, then refer back to these big differences between men’s and women’s brains.

1. Human relationships. Women tend to communicate more effectively than men, focusing on how to create a solution that works for the group, talking through issues, and utilizes non-verbal cues such as tone, emotion, and empathy whereas men tend to be more task-oriented, less talkative, and more isolated. Men have a more difficult time understanding emotions that are not explicitly verbalized, while women tend to intuit emotions and emotional cues. These differences explain why men and women sometimes have difficulty communicating and why men-to-men friendships look different from friendships among women.

2. Left brain vs. both hemispheres. Men tend to process better in the left hemisphere of the brain while women tend to process equally well between the two hemispheres. This difference explains why men are generally stronger with left-brain activities and approach problem-solving from a task-oriented perspective while women typically solve problems more creatively and are more aware of feelings while communicating.

3. Mathematical abilities. An area of the brain called the inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) is typically significantly larger in men, especially on the left side, than in women. This section of the brain is thought to control mental mathematical ability, and probably explains why men frequently perform higher in mathematical tasks than do women. Interestingly, this is the same area of Einstein’s brain that was discovered to be abnormally large. The IPL also processes sensory information, and the larger right side in women allows them to focus on, "specific stimuli, such as a baby crying in the night."

4. Reaction to stress. Men tend to have a "fight or flight" response to stress situations while women seem to approach these situations with a "tend and befriend" strategy. Psychologist Shelley E. Taylor coined the phrase "tend and befriend" after recognizing that during times of stress women take care of themselves and their children (tending) and form strong group bonds (befriending). The reason for these different reactions to stress is rooted in hormones. The hormone oxytocin is released during stress in everyone. However, estrogen tends to enhance oxytocin resulting in calming and nurturing feelings whereas testosterone, which men produce in high levels during stress, reduces the effects of oxytocin.

5. Language. Two sections of the brain responsible for language were found to be larger in women than in men, indicating one reason that women typically excel in language-based subjects and in language-associated thinking. Additionally, men typically only process language in their dominant hemisphere, whereas women process language in both hemispheres. This difference offers a bit of protection in case of a stroke. Women may be able to recover more fully from a stroke affecting the language areas in the brain while men may not have this same advantage.
 
6. Emotions. Women typically have a larger deep limbic system than men, which allows them to be more in touch with their feelings and better able to express them, which promotes bonding with others. Because of this ability to connect, more women serve as caregivers for children. The down side to this larger deep limbic system is that it also opens women up to depression, especially during times of hormonal shifts such as after childbirth or during a woman’s menstrual cycle.
 
7. Brain size. Typically, men’s brains are 11-12% bigger than women’s brains. This size difference has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, but is explained by the difference in physical size between men and women. Men need more neurons to control their greater muscle mass and larger body size, thus generally have a larger brain.
 
8. Pain. Men and women perceive pain differently. In studies, women require more morphine than men to reach the same level of pain reduction. Women are also more likely to vocalize their pain and to seek treatment for their pain than are men. The area of the brain that is activated during pain is the amygdala, and researchers have discovered that in men, the right amygdala is activated and in women, the left amygdala is activated. The right amygdala has more connections with areas of the brain that control external functions while the right amygdala has more connections with internal functions. This difference probably explains why women perceive pain more intensely than do men.
 
9. Spatial ability. Men typically have stronger spatial abilities, or being able to mentally represent a shape and its dynamics, whereas women typically struggle in this area. Medical experts have discovered that women have a thicker parietal region of the brain, which hinders the ability to mentally rotate objects–an aspect of spatial ability. Research has shown this ability in babies as young as 5 months old, negating any ideas that these abilities were strengthened by environmental influences.
 
10. Susceptibility to disorders. Because of the way men and women use the two hemispheres of the brain differently, there are some disorders that men and women are susceptible to in different ways. Men are more apt to have dyslexia or other language problems. If women have dyslexia, they are more likely to compensate for it. Women, on the other hand, are more susceptible to mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. While handedness is not a disorder, these brain tendencies also explain why more men are left-handed than are women. Men are also more likely to be diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and Tourette’s Syndrome.

By Amber Hensley
www.mastersofhealthcare.com

Do Women and Men Have Different Remote Work Styles?

Everybody knows that men and women think differently in a lot of ways. But do those differences matter when it comes to working remotely and managing remote teams? According to Sally Helgesen, it matters a lot. Managers who don’t appreciate those distances can do themselves, their companies and those employees a great disservice. 

Sally is the author of “The Female-Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work”. She cites scientific studies that show how a woman’s brain functions in different ways than a man’s.  How they differ is important, particularly for managers who might not be aware of these conflicting world views or assign value to behaviors that don’t get the desired results.

According to Helgesen, one major difference is that women tend to be highly skilled multitaskers, while men are able to concentrate on one thing for more concentrated periods. Neuroscientific research confirms this, and women often take pride in their ability to handle a ton of things at once. This is a plus and a minus, for women and for those who manage them. 

“I believe it’s a core reason that women can tend to over-commit. Those who manage women remotely can benefit from understanding this, especially since excessive multi-tasking can lead to burnout and inhibit creative thought,” she says. Managers need to watch out for signs that someone is stressed out.

On the flip side, a man’s ability to focus on one thing for a long time can be seen as beneficial, but it can also lead to tunnel vision  and an insensitivity to people and behavior not seen as “mission critical”. There’s also a tendency to believe that the amount of time spent on something equals better results, something that is often not true as short bursts of concentration tend to bear better fruit than agonizing over something for extended periods.

One major difference between the sexes that really impacts managers is that women are (in general) more likely to speak up if they’re unhappy about their immediate circumstances and environment, while men tend to suffer in silence. (Helgesen’s term for it is ” men will suck it up and tolerate a lot more for a lot longer”). This doesn’t mean that the woman’s complaints are without merit, or that men don’t experience the same misery and are equally unhappy. But if a woman mentions that something is wrong, she might be seen as a complainer by her male manager. Conversely, a female manager might take a man’s stoicism as being uncommunicative or not proactively trying to improve a situation. Such value judgments can seriously harm a working relationship.

Without the daily contact and familiarity of working in the same location, it can often be difficult for managers to really understand what’s going on with their team. One person’s laserlike focus is another person’s antisocial moping. A willingness to abide short term discomfort for long-term goal needs to be balanced with a willingness to change and improve the current situation.

Understanding how gender impacts behavior is only one more reason good leaders take the time to get to know their people and look at results, not at specific behavior that can be misinterpreted.

For more of this conversation, listen to a full interview with Sally Helgesen on the Cranky Middle Manager Show.

blogs.bnet.com