Holiday Hazards

A new study from Children's Hospital Boston's Division of Emergency Medicine has found that holiday decorations, particularly glass ornaments, are one more safety hazard parents must consider during the season. A review of records from Children's Emergency Department revealed an average of five ornament-related injuries per year; more than half of these injuries involve a child eating fragments of these ornaments, including batteries and pieces of glass.

It's the greatest time of the year kids. Could you please stop eating the ornaments?! Honestly, you've got hot chocolate, pumpkin pie, egg nog, etc. Kids these days...

Have a safe holiday season! It's been great!

Even Ancient Peruvians Had Stress

When individuals are stressed, cortisol is released into every part of their body, and I mean everywhere - in the blood, saliva, urine, and even hair. In a study to be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers from The University of Western Ontario studied the hair of 10 samples from different archaeological sites throughout Peru. Of course, hair doesn't last throughout a person's entire lifetime, but the study allowed researchers to examine the period of time just before these individuals passed. The study found high levels of cortisol in portions of the hair, meaning high levels of stress just before death. Also, researchers noted that a majority of the samples experienced multiple episodes of stress throughout their final years of life. Although stress wasn't an identified physiological state until the 1930s, the cortisol tests show that stress was much a part of ancient Peruvians everyday lives. In the midst of final exams, it's good to know that even the ancients had problems.

More on the topic: Studying Hair of Ancient Peruvians Answers Questions About Stress

UCLA Takes on Gas

(NOTE: As a proud Trojan, I am a little less than enthused about today's contributor to my blog, but I will suck it up for the sake of science.) With the persistant threat of greenhouse gases that only increases with every passing day, institutions for green technology and alternative fuels have become a thriving industry, praised by the public. There've been many breakthroughs harnessing wind power, solar power, hydrogen fuel cells, etc., and it looks like a little school across town may have found may have come across another.

Researchers at UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have found a new appraoch to reduce greenhouse gases while produce alternative liquid fuel, isobutanol . Scientists have found that by genetically modifying the cyanobacterium Synechoccus elongatus, they create a new strain that metabolizes carbon dioxide, and with the use of solar power, produces isobutanol. (Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas resulting from burning fossil fuels. It is most commonly produced by automobiles and power plants.) The research will be published in this week's Nature Biotechnology journal.

GOOD JOB BRUINS! I mean, something good had to come out of you eventually...

Aussie Aussie Aussie

I was looking for my next story and came across this title:

Many Parents Encourage Underage Drinking, Australian Study Finds

I knew I should've went to Australia for a semester. The first line of the article states that HALF the adults in Australia believe 15- to 17-year-olds should be allowed to drink alcohol - as long as they're at home, under parental supervision. Oh to be 16 again, in Australia.

In my opinion, I think Australia has really got something here. I believe that as long as teenagers are in a safe environment, it's alright to introduce them to alcohol - better at home then the kegger across town. And let's face it, a good number of teenagers are at that kegger, whether parents like it or not. I'm young, so of course I'm bias, but I think I would have rather had my parents given me my first drink then find out about my late-night debacles by hosing off my dinner from the driveway. I think Australian parents are taking the proactive approach of teaching their children about alcohol according to their terms. Teenagers learn by example, and weren't all parents in their shoes at one point? The only problem I foresee is that I don't really know how easy the plan would be to implement. Would they establish a law that allows teenagers to drink under certain conditions? And if so, how would they enforce those conditions?

If you do read the article, it is blatantly obvious that the writer takes the opposing view, stating that drinking at a young age increases the risk of "long-term alcohol related health problems" and can "disturb a wide range of key brain functions." Of course, I completely understand the concern since teenagers are still growing and their bodies are still developing, but has no one learned yet that prohibiting a teenager from doing something makes it that much more alluring to them. They are still children after all.

The article goes on to emphasize alcohol education, which I believe is a very positive step, since most educational programs in school focus on drug use - most people tend to forget that alcohol is a drug due to its prevalence in everyday life. The only problem that I have with the article is that they refuse to acknowledge the fact that thousands of teenagers are already drinking behind closed doors, or have at least tried it, and this will keep happening no matter what the government does. Adults need to just face the facts and try to be more proactive in their children's lives and less reprimanding.

Brain's Balancing Act

A recently published study (gated) performed by scientists at New York University (NYU) Langone Medical Center has found that the ability for humans to learn and adapt to changes in our everyday lives lies in the tiny, miniscule junctions where nerve cells in the brain communicate, neural synapses. Using a powerful imaging technique called two-photon microscopy on the brains of mice, scientists found alterations in the dendritic spines over a period of months. When a mouse learned a new task or was exposed to a new stimulus, scientists observed new spines emerging. Furthermore, as the mice became more improved at specific skills, only a fraction of the new spines would persist. While these spines persisted, scientists noticed that a corresponfing number of older spines that had been formed during the mice's development before the experiment had disappeared. The end result was that only a minute fraction of the mice's spines were gained or lost after exposure to a new experience, while the majority of their existing spines maintained. This study offers insight to how humans, who have at least ten times the amount of dendritic spines on each neuron, are allowed to experience and learn new things everyday without losing existing memories.