GOLLYGEE!

Theme by Anders Norén

Month: November 2012 (page 6 of 9)

11.15.2012

telomere length linked to longevity

Telomere length has long been thought to play a role in the death of cells. Our telomeres shorten as we age, and the truncated telomeres have been linked to some diseases. Now research suggests that it increases overall chances of dying soon. From Science News:

To find out, researchers at Kaiser Permanente and the University of California, San Francisco measured telomere length in 110,266 people in northern California. The participants are part of an ongoing project that explores links between genetics and health. This study is the largest ever to examine telomeres’ role in health.

The 10 percent of people with the shortest telomeres had a more than 20 percent higher risk of dying than people with longer telomeres, Catherine Schaefer, an epidemiologist who directs the Kaiser Permanente Research Program on Genes, Environment and Health, reported November 8 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. “It seems as though once your telomeres get critically short, your risk of dying goes up,” she said. The increased death risk is about the same as for people who drink 20 to 30 alcoholic beverages per week or smoke for 20 to 30 years. “It’s a modest increase, but it’s not nothing.”

The study was presented at the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting.

11.14.2012

how camels survive in the desert

An Arabian Camel

Genomic studies are helping researchers determine what is unique about these dessert dwelling mammals. It turns out it is mostly their metabolism. From Scientific American:

Camels, as ruminants like cattle and sheep, digest food by chewing the cud. But many of the Bactrian genome’s rapidly evolving genes regulate the metabolic pathway, suggesting that what camels do with the nutrients after digestion is a whole different ball game. “It was surprising to me that they had significant difference in the metabolism,” says Kim Worley, a molecular geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. The differences could point to how Bactrians produce and store energy in the desert.

The work shows that camels can withstand massive blood glucose levels owing in part to changes in genes that are linked to type II diabetes in humans. The Bactrians’ rapidly evolving genes include some that regulate insulin signaling pathways, the authors explain. A closer study of how camels respond to insulin may help to unravel how insulin regulation and diabetes work in humans. “I’m very interested in the glucose story,” says Brian Dalrymple, a computational biologist at the Queensland Bioscience Precinct in Brisbane, Australia.

The researchers also identified sections of the genome that could begin to explain why Bactrian camels are much better than humans at tolerating high levels of salt in their bloodstreams. In humans, the gene CYP2J controls hypertension: suppressing it leads to high blood pressure. However, camels have multiple copies of the gene, which could keep their blood pressure low even when they consume a lot of salt, suggest the authors of the latest work.

The study appears in Nature Communications.

11.14.2012

reading maxim increases your odds of becoming a crime victim

This is according to a study published in the Social Science Journal. A social scientist at Texas Christian University tested this hypothesis by seeing how often loose change was stolen from his car at a car wash depending what else he left in the seat. A summary from NPR:

 In a new paper titled “Getting Hosed,” Kinkade and fellow researchers Ronald Burns and Michael Bachmann at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth found that there were certain factors that increased the risk of theft.

At some carwashes, Kinkade dropped off the car with a copy of Maxim magazine inside it — the magazine contains plenty of suggestive pictures of semi-clad women. Underneath a seat, Kinkade also left crushed beer cans.

The idea, he said in an interview, was to suggest the driver of the car was somehow “deviant.”

Kinkade found that the cash was twice as likely to be stolen from when the magazine and beer cans were present. He also found that larger amounts of money were taken from the car, compared with when the magazine and beer cans were absent.

Kinkade did not confront the theives afterward saying that his study was not meant to be a sting operation.

« Older posts Newer posts »
//couledochemy.net/4/4535925