41 years ago, Roger proposed to me at the ‘Blue Bayou’ at Disneyland, married 40 years this month, we wanted a return tour!
Here is what I am reading today:
“The way that the visual centers of men and women’s brains works is different, finds new research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Biology of Sex Differences. Men have greater sensitivity to fine detail and rapidly moving stimuli, but women are better at discriminating between colors. In the brain there are high concentrations of male sex hormone (androgen) receptors throughout cerebral cortex, especially in the visual cortex which is responsible for processing images. Androgens are also responsible for controlling the development of neurons in the visual cortex during embryogenesis, meaning that males have 25% more of these neurons than females.”
“The malaria species rampant in the Asia-Pacific region has been a significant driver of evolution of the human genome, a new study has shown. An international team of researchers has shown that Plasmodium vivax malaria, the most prevalent malaria species in the Asia-Pacific, is a significant cause of genetic evolution that provides protection against malaria.”
“Evolving to become less aggressive could be key to saving the Tasmanian devil — famed for its ferocity — from extinction, research suggests. The species is being wiped out by Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), a fatal infectious cancer spread by biting. The new study, published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology, found the less often a devil gets bitten, the more likely it is to become infected with the cancer.”
“The psychologists asked 88 people with a fear of spiders to approach a large, live tarantula in an open container outdoors. The participants were told to walk closer and closer to the spider and eventually touch it if they could. The subjects were then divided into four groups and sat in front of another tarantula in a container in an indoor setting. In the first group, the subjects were asked to describe the emotions they were experiencing and to label their reactions to the tarantula—saying, for example, “I’m anxious and frightened by the ugly, terrifying spider.”
2 Comments
BenSimon · September 24, 2012 at 2:36 pm
I know that a similar Australian marsupial, the Tasmanian wolf (also known as the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine) went extinct in the 1990s after being severely endangered for decades if not centuries. Do you know if its extinction was caused by Devil Facial Tumour Disease too, and if that disease is, as its name suggests, limited to the Tasmanian devil species?
crfan_21 · October 22, 2012 at 6:04 pm
I think that the article about the gene mutation that protects against the lethal strain of malaria is really interesting. I find it really fascinating how our genetics can really protect us from environmental influence. Though it is sad that this protection from malaria stems from a blood disorder, if medical researchers can successfully work with this defective gene to find a vaccination against malaria, it would be life changing. I researched a bit online and this particular strain of malaria accounts for about 65% of all cases of malaria in Asia/South America, a quite large amount! About 2.5 million people are at risk of contracting this particular strain, so a vaccine would be a much desired commodity!
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