FEAST OR FAMINE

Canberra Times (30 September 2012) reports that viewing images of cute animals can increase productivity at work . Pictures of cute and cuddly baby animals may lift work performance, inspire more fine-tuned attention, and careful behaviour, maintains the new research. A Japanese study maintains that cute creatures – including Hello Kitty and Pokemon’s Pikachu characters – stir positive feelings because they resemble babies. Researchers from Hiroshima University conclude that it’s due to their big eyes and large heads! Viewing baby faces is known to trigger “care-giving impulses” in humans. These impulses, says the research published in the journal PLoS ONE, can facilitate social situations by encouraging friendliness. They can also improve tasks that require narrow focus and attention. ( http://www.livescience.com/23515-cute-animal-images-boost-work-performance.html ). MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the...

Eleven days of comedy creates laughter in Kashmir. Khabar South Asia (September 25, 2012) reports that local groups have started organizing cultural programs in Kashmir to nurture young artists and revive traditions that have lapsed during years of conflict. Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir International Convention Centre held performances by young artists of Kashmir Valley during an eleven-day comedy festival from September 9-20. Shabbir Hyder, head of the Jammu & Kashmir Film Makers and Artists Cooperative (JKFMAC) said that the festival had resumed in 2011 after a hiatus of 23 years. The theatre tradition halted due to conflict in the region in the early 1990s. The revival aims to provide a platform for young artists so that they gain exposure. JKFMAC also hopes that the festival would attract professionals to the region to share skills and for networking, as well as showing visitors the Kashmiri hospitality. C omedy was chosen as a way to bring ...

The first-ever clinical drug trials for children with Progeria have proven effective. The Progeria Research Foundation ( http://www.progeriaresearch.org ), on September 24, officially announced a cure for Progeria. Lonafarnib, a type of farnesyltranferase inhibitor (FTI)—originally developed to treat cancer—has had effective results for Progeria. The results of the study, funded and coordinated by The Progeria Research Foundation, were published on September 24, 2012, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Progeria is a condition in which people age rapidly, such that a ten-year-old will look like an eighty-year-old, yet still be small with the mind of a normal ten-year-old. Hence, it is a condition of the body, and not the mind. It is an extremely rare, fatal condition. According to Medical News Today ( http://www.medicalnewstoday.com ) Progeria is derived from Greek, meaning “before old age.” It is also referred to as Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome ...

The Volcano (2001) is the sixth novel by Venero Armanno, an Australian born author of Sicilian heritage.   The novel commences with a reflection of Emilio Aquila’s life, from 1943 in Sicily when, at fifteen years of age, he was kicked and hospitalized by his family’s donkey. After the kick in the head he has violent inclinations. Living on a farm in the shadow of the Etna volcano, with its rumbling and roiling, smoke and fire, he is drawn to the mountain—not repulsed by it, or afraid of it. He runs away from home six months later, taking only the donkey, to live in the labyrinthine caves on the slopes of Mt. Etna. Years later, in the 1950s, he has two sea voyage tickets which took him “five years of blood to buy.” And so he arrives in Brisbane, Australia, with his wife Desideria (who soon leaves him), as a man with a shady past and a secretive life. Emilio, now in his seventies, lives in a groundsman’s cottage on the Queensland property of a Vietnames...

The Eurasia Review (September 22, 2012) reported on an appeal by the children of Kashmir for both India and Pakistan to maintain peace at the Line of Control. In the Neelum Valley in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, close to the Line of Control that divides Kashmir from the India-controlled region, both countries were urged to avoid violations and conflict for the sake of civilians and children. On World Peace Day, Friday September 21, Press for Peace organized a rally and a walk for children at a village community school near the town of Athmugam close to the Line of Control. Carrying peace banners and placards, with messages to retain the cease-fire truce and to give peace a chance, children, parents, principals, and teachers marched to celebrate World Peace Day. The walk was a call, by the children of Kashmir, for the preservation of permanent peace, tolerance, harmony, and co-existence. Currently a cease-fire pact has placed the Line of Control in a...

Dummy spits happen from time to time, especially by athletes in high-stakes situations. What is a dummy spit? It’s an adult imitating a child spitting the pacifier, it’s a brain snap; an adult tantrum; a lost temper; or a burst blood vessel (figuratively speaking). A dummy spit is a sudden display of anger or frustration in a childish manner—usually aggressively.    Head of sports psychology at Condor Performance in Sydney, Gareth Mole, says that athletes who blame the dummy spit on a normal release of aggression are talking garbage—he says it’s a convenient fiction. He says it’s about lack of control; a lack of controlling one’s own aggressive impulses. He says “a brain snap doesn’t exist.” He calls it “an experience of overwhelming emotion.” Others call it an abrupt disproportionate reaction to an event that didn’t go as planned. Tom Denson, a senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of New South Wales maintains that people can learn to contr...

On September 18, for a brief moment, the flowers at Floriade, the annual flower festival in Canberra—the nation’s capital—were pelted with hail stones. A thunderstorm, with rain and hail (not unlikely in Canberra’s spring) passed over the sight at Commonwealth Park for a few moments. According to the Canberra Times, about 1.2 millimetres of rain fell on the area. Fortunately the hail stones were small, and therefore there was no substantial damage. Even if there was damage, the head gardener said that fresh flowers would blossom within a week because they maintain a display that lasts the entire month of the festival. The free festival, from September 15 to October 14 celebrates Floriade’s 25 th year with the theme: Be Spring Inspired. In addition to blooms, gourmet gardens, bonsai trees, and landscaping designs, Floriade also has gardening stalls, food, rides, children’s events and a Kid’s Corner, bands, and world-music artists. N ightfest returns this...

When lizards drop or lose their tail, they have the ability to regrow another one.  Understanding how lizards regenerate a lost tail may help scientists and doctors regenerate amputated human limbs. Regeneration is the process by which some organisms replace or restore lost, detached, or amputated body parts. Some organisms regenerate tissues to heal a wound, or regrow hair or feathers, or regrow a partial limb, while others can fully replace a lost limb. Most lizards have a weakened area in their tail which enables them to break, or detach, the vertebrae (bone) and muscle easily. Hence lizards themselves can control when they sever their tail. This voluntary self-amputation is called caudal autotomy. Losing a tail is therefore a survival mechanism. The dropped appendage continues to wriggle which attracts the attention of the predator, thus enabling the lizard to escape. Researchers at the University of Michigan, “A venomous tale: how lizards can shed ...

New Scientist ( http://www.newscientist.com , 15 September 2012) reported that wild crows remember human faces in the same way that mammals do. We’ve known for a long time that mammals, such as marsupials, rodents, primates, whales, elephants, horses, and dogs, recognize and respond to people. Now scientists maintain that crows can too. Scientists at the University of Washington in Seattle, America, have shown that crows can distinguish human faces and remember how they were treated by humans. Scientists wore latex masks as they captured 12 wild American crows ( Corvus brachyrhynchos ). The crows associated the captor’s masks with this traumatic experience. While in captivity, the crows were fed and cared for by people wearing a different mask from those who captured them. After four weeks, the researchers scanned images of the captured crows’ brains to monitor their brain patterns. They tested the crow’s brain patterns whenever they were with people with “capture” mask...

BBC News ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19570024 ) reported that scientific researchers in the United Kingdom hope to treat deafness, in the future, with stem cells. And the gerbil may provide an answer. Deaf gerbils were partially able to hear (45% recovery of hearing loss) when the nerves in their ears were rebuilt. In the journal Nature, the UK study reported a huge step forward in treating deafness after stem cells were used to restore hearing in gerbils, for the first time. The nerves which relay sounds into the brain were rebuilt, thus providing the gerbils with partial hearing. However, treating humans is still a long way off. The report indicated that it would be a drastic shift from being unable to hear traffic to hearing a conversation. Although the news is encouraging, the use of stem cells to restore nerves in the ear is an exact technique that may not help the majority of people with hearing loss. About 10% of people with profound hearing loss hav...