ELSEVIER FLASH ALERT TO NEW SCIENCE & HEALTH RESEARCH STORIES
October 19th, 2009EMBARGOED FOR PUBLICATION OR BROADCAST UNTIL 00:01 GMT ON 21st OCTOBER
Issue 105
October 2009
If you report a story, we ask that you credit Elsevier’s journal as the source.
Welcome to the 105th edition of Flash, our bi-weekly alert for science, health and medical journalists. Flash is a courtesy service with access to ScienceDirect, Elsevier’s online platform, providing full text access to some 2,000 scientific, technical and medical journals.
Please use your Flash login and password to access each article’s full text on ScienceDirect. For a new password, forgotten passwords or if you have any feedback, please contact Anna Hogrebe at newsroom@elsevier.com or at +31 20 485 3269.
ARTICLES
1. ANIMALS HAVE EMOTIONS TOO – WE HAVE PROOF
Animal lovers will give three cheers for a new article featured in Elsevier’s Emotion, Space and Society, illustrating a few stories where different animals showcase varying emotions.
Author Marc Bekoff’s piece specifically calls out three different animal events in which he witnessed a group of magpies grieving for a fallen member, a baboon who went to great lengths to showcase his irritation with fellow baboons by ultimately urinating on a partner and a pack of elephants showing empathy for a member of their group who couldn’t travel as fast as the rest of the herd.
Bekoff goes on to write about wild justice, noting that animals and humans share a whole spectrum of emotional and cognitive capacities, including empathy, forgiveness, trust and reciprocity.
The paper concludes by stating animals are sentient beings who experience the ups and downs of daily life and that we must respect this when we interact with them. The suffering that numerous animals endure while some researchers try to figure out if they’re feeling anything at all is unacceptable, cruel and needless given what we know about animal emotions and sentience, he says.
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2. RED WINE OR WHITE WINE – WHICH IS WORSE FOR YOUR TEETH?
For many, a chilled glass of wine is the perfect end to a long day. Some prefer red, others white, but wine consumption is definitely a popular cultural norm in Europe and the U.S.
While many know a glass of wine can calm the senses, few are aware of the effects it can have on their teeth. In Elsevier’s Nutrition Research, a new in vitro study aims to determine and compare the erosive effects of red and white wines on enamel surfaces. Eight wines were ultimately selected with different pH values. Enamel samples with an average surface area of 25 mm² were prepared from 25 extracted permanent teeth from male and female patients aged 40 to 65 years and incubated with the wines for up to 24 hours. The amounts of released calcium were determined colorimetrically, and mean surface roughness was measured with a profilometer.
After 24 hours, white wine was shown to cause a significantly higher Ca release than red wines. The values of surface roughness were similar. Based on these findings, it can be predicted that frequent consumption of white wines might lead to severe dental erosion. As an aside, the tradition of enjoying different cheeses for dessert, or in combination with drinking wine, might have a beneficial effect on preventing dental erosion since cheeses contain calcium in a high concentration.
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3. LONG-TERM EXPOSURE TO TRAFFIC SPELLS TROUBLE FOR THE BRAINS OF THE ELDERLY
If you live next to a busy highway, you may want to take notice of Elsevier’s latest study in Environmental Research. Animal research has suggested that fine particulate matter (PM) can translocate from the upper respiratory tract to the brain and cause brain inflammation – a precursor to neurodegenerative diseases. But does this PM cause similar damage in humans?
Focusing on a group of 399 women aged 68 to 79 years who have lived at the same residence for more than 20 years, researchers were able to assess for long-term exposure to PM, as well as test for mild cognitive impairment (MCI)). MCI is associated with a high risk of progression to Alzheimer’s disease. The exposure assessment comprised a background concentration of PM and traffic-related PM indicated by the distance of the residential address to the next busy road. MCI was assessed via a battery of several neuropsychological tests and participants’ odour identification ability.
For the women 74 years or younger, distance to traffic was a significant and consistent risk factor for MCI. The scores of the three tests were significantly reduced if the participant’s residential address was within a distance of 50m to the next busy road with a traffic density of more than 10,000 cars per day. These results indicate that chronic exposure to traffic-related PM may be involved in the development of MCI, and since MCI is a transition state between normal aging and dementia, more research should be conducted with these women.
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A great deal has changed in America from 1960 to 2006. People have migrated to different parts of the country, appliances have grown more efficient, and “green” is no longer just a colour, but rather a movement to treat the planet and its resources with greater respect.
Taking a closer look at one of these slivers of change, Elsevier’s new Cities examines how the population shift in the United States from 1960 to 2006 has affected the energy demand for heating and cooling. Three analyses were performed. The first focused on climatological considerations, the second also included energy efficiencies of heating and cooling appliances, and the third added efficiencies power generating plants. All analyses were based on the 1960 and 2006 population data for the 50 largest metropolitan areas.
Findings reveal the population shift resulted in about an 11 percent reduction in the combined energy demand per person for heating and cooling, compared with what the energy demand would have been if the relative population distribution among the metropolitan areas had not changed between 1960 and 2006. Specifically, more people have shifted West and South, contributing to this improvement.
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5. BEING ONE OF THE COOL KIDS CAN BE TOUGH, ESPECIALLY ON OTHERS
Is it cool to be mean? Do adolescents sporting major attitude rule the playgrounds?
A new paper featured in Elsevier’s Journal of School Psychology examines the association between high-status social positions in early adolescence and both physical and relational aggression. A total of 234 sixth-graders completed peer nominations assessing aggression, social centrality and coolness. Data analysis was based on all sixth graders who received peer nominations, for a total sample size of 417
students. Physically aggressive behaviours were described as hitting and threatening others, starting fights and disruptiveness. Relational aggression was defined as behaviours specifically intended to damage another child’s friendships, social status or feelings of inclusion in a peer group (e.g.
gossiping, rumour spreading, social exclusion or withdrawing acceptance or friendship).
Sadly, the results are not in favour of being nice. Both physical and relational aggression is positively associated with being cool. Groupswith individuals higher in relational aggression are also considered cooler than groups with individuals with lower levels of relational aggression. Physical aggression appeared to be related to higher overall social centrality and being nominated as cool, whereas relational aggression was related to membership in high-status peer groups and high-status within the peer group.
The authors of this paper conclude these findings could help when implementing school-based interventions aimed at reducing aggressive behaviours and promoting social competence.
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With Wii, PlayStation and online gaming gaining in popularity at record pace, it’s no wonder more studies are being conducted on how these virtual worlds affect the people so drawn to them, especially in terms of aggression levels.
In Elsevier’s Evolution & Human Behavior, a new study, focusing on 14 teams of three young men, was designed to measure the salivary testosterone and cortisol before and after competing in within-group and between-group video games that simulated violent male-to-male competition. The game type Death Match was used during the within-group tournaments and Onslaught was used for the between-group tournaments. Four saliva samples were obtained from each participant during each tournament.
Men’s hormonal responses to these games depend on whether they are playing against a teammate or another group. Men who contributed the most to their teams’ between-group victory showed testosterone increases immediately after the competition, but only when the between-group tournament was played before the within-group tournament. In contrast, high-ranking men tended to have lower testosterone response and higher cortisol during the within-group tournaments.
The researchers of this paper say these findings for of the testosterone response during the between-group competition suggests that violent multiplayer video games may be appealing to young men because they simulate the mental strategies that evolved to facilitate male-to-male coalitional competition – minus the broken bones and bruises.
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The Scirus tool bar makes it easier than ever to find scientific, technical and medical information on the Web and is quick and easy to install. After installing, the Scirus toolbar conveniently appears below your Internet Explorer address bar, meaning you have scientific searches at your fingertips, wherever you are on the Web. Link to Scirus: http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/toolbar/ If your browser does not support HTML, you may need to copy the links below and paste them into your browser to access the articles:
1. doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2009.08.001
2. doi:10.1016/j.nutres.2009.08.004
3. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2009.08.003
4. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2009.08.001
5. doi:10.1016/j.jsp.2009.07.003
6. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.07.002
