Health & Science News: April

Santino, a 30-year-old chimpanzee who has lived in a Swedish zoo most of his life, is the only male in a group of half a dozen females.  He shows displeasure at human observers and flings stones or bits of concrete at them, but quickly finding suitable weapons isn’t an easy task, so the chimp starts his day by scavenging for stones within his confines and getting them ready for when he needs them. In the past, he has thrown stones at visitors in rapid succession, using an underhand technique, and has hit spectators as far as 30 feet away.  And that’s made him quite a celebrity, but Santino has also become “the subject of a scientific paper documenting how an animal can plan an attack,” said Mathias Osvath, director of the primate research station at Lund University and author of the aforementioned paper. 

Migraine sufferers say they don’t need a weatherman to forecast what’s coming; their headaches do the job just fine.  Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center researchers have studied 7,000 emergency-room visitors over seven-years and have report that headache-related hospital visits went up in the 24 hours after air temperatures rose. A lower barometric pressure 48 to 72 hours before a patient’s arrival showed a higher risk of headache.  For every temperature increase of 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) in 24 hours, there was a 7.5% risk of severe headache. For every 5 millimeters the barometric pressure reading fell over 72 hours, there was a 6 percent risk of headache. Surprisingly, air pollutants did not vary the stats.

There is direct evidence that increasing acidification of the oceans, brought on by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, affects the ability of small marine organisms to create shells.  Evidence comes from foraminifera, crunchy plankton that float by the untold billions in the ocean.  Andrew D. Moy and William R. Howard of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center in Hobart, Tasmania, found the shells of one modern species in the Southern Ocean lighter than shells of the same species in core samples from the same ocean floor.  Those core shells predate the industrial age, when CO2 levels started rising and acidity of the ocean, caused by the absorption of the gas, began to increase.  Researchers, reporting their work in Nature Geoscience publications, said that the modern shells were 30 to 35 percent lighter than older shells of the same size range. “We think the shells are thinner,” Dr. Howard said.

Research shows that mental work is physically exhausting.   A British study in The Journal of Applied Physiology, asked 10 men and 6 women to perform a computer exercise requiring concentration, memory and reaction speed. Participants then exercised on a stationary bicycle until exhausted.  Bicyclers reported being tired 15 percent more quickly after mental exercise.  Samuele M. Marcora, lead author and a senior lecturer in physiology at Bangor University in Wales said, “If you want to improve fitness at maximum levels, you’re probably better off doing training when you’re not mentally fatigued.”

The crew of the International Space Station hurriedly climbed into a spacecraft lifeboat for 11 minutes while a small but potentially dangerous piece of an old rocket motor whizzed past.

Reports show that online donors, most times, do not fulfill their online promises.  Findings suggest that while the Internet is a valuable fund-raising tool for charities, it does not replace direct mail or other forms of fund-raising.

A report says terminally ill patients who drew comfort from religion sought more aggressive, life-prolonging care before they died than the less religious. 

Flesh-eating maggots may not be as good for open wounds as thought.  Although they clean wounds faster than normal treatments, their presence does not aid the wound in healing more quickly.  Some patients even found the larval therapy more painful, according to the study in the British Medical Journal.  Maggots have a long history in medicine.  Napoleon’s battle surgeon was a maggot enthusiast, and put maggots to work during the American Civil War and World War One.  Medical experts now examine their healing powers and potential to prevent dangerous infections like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Scientists say that electrically stimulating the spinal cords of rodents has reversed some symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.  With a mild current flowing up their spines and into their brains, animals had the ability to scamper around their cages, normally.  The therapy is a potential alternative to direct stimulation, which requires risky and invasive surgery to implant electrodes deep in the brain. Only 30 percent of severely impaired Parkinson’s patients qualify for the operation.  Spinal cord stimulation is less invasive, safer, and would reduce the drugs needed to treat the disease, said the report’s lead author, Duke Neuroscientist, Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis.  The procedure is being tested on monkeys and “if it succeeds, human clinical trials could begin in the next few years.” 

The National Center for Health Statistics has stated that the U.S. recorded more births in 2007 than any other year in American history.  The 4,317,000 births in 2007 barely took the lead from births recorded in 1957, at the height of the baby boom.  The increase is due to women of all ages, including those in their 30s and 40s, and a record share was from unmarried women.  The average woman has 2.1 children.

Reports show that being overweight takes years off your life.  People weighing a third more than their ideal weight may reduce their life by three years on average.  ”Excess weight shortens human life span,” said researcher Gary Whitlock of the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford.  For a lot of people, a third means 50 to 60 pounds of excess weight.  Data from 57 existing studies examined mortality rates for 900,000 adults.  Obesity is considered 30 pounds of additional weight.  Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease; cancer; increase in death from lung disease and other vascular diseases were attributed to being over weight.  Age, sex, and smoking were counted in the research study.  Severe obesity has a similar effect to smoking on mortality rates, but researcher Richard Peto of the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford cautioned that smoking to stay thin is not the answer.

A 7.9 earthquake hit the South Pacific island country of Tonga.  No reports of casualties or damages emerged.  A tsunami alert was issued immediately after the earthquake, but then canceled.  The earthquake center reported sea level readings indicating a tsunami was generated but its waves were determined to be not that much higher than normal sea levels.