Racial Discrimination Still Exists, at Least in Restaurants

Imagine yourself in December of 1955 as Rosa Parks and you are being arrested by the police for refusing to give up your seat to a white man and move to the back of a city bus just because you are black. Think of all the struggles the Black Americans went through over the years in fighting racism and discrimination. The protests led by Martin Luther King Jr. and his popular “I have a dream” speech where he said, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character...” If you take a look at those periods and the present and the current situation, you may be inclined to think that racial discrimination is a thing of the past and maybe support the notion with the fact that the US now has an African-American president, but research has shown that racial discrimination still exists, at least in restaurants.

A new study from North Carolina State University shows that more than one-third of restaurant servers discriminate against African-American customers. A third of the servers that participated in the research admitted to varying their quality of service based on customers’ race, often giving African-Americans inferior service. 200 servers working at 18 full-service chain restaurants in central North Carolina were surveyed and majority of them – approximately 86 percent – were white.

The survey results showed that 38.5 percent of servers reported that customers’ race informed their level of service at least some of the time, often resulting in providing inferior service to African-American customers. The findings show that many servers perceive African-American customers to be impolite and/or poor tippers, suggesting that black patrons, in particular, are likely targets of servers’ self-professed discriminatory actions. The survey also found that 52.8 percent of servers reported seeing other servers discriminate against African-American customers by giving them poor service at least some of the time.

Race continues to be an issue in society and is also a significant barrier to equal treatment in restaurants and other areas of social life.

Soda Consumption Increases Stroke Risk

It’s one of those usual sunny days and you’ve had a bottle of your favorite soda and contemplating on having another bottle. You should take time to read this and perhaps have a change of mind. A greater consumption of sugar-sweetened and low-calorie sodas is associated with a higher risk of stroke. This is according to a research from Cleveland Clinic's Wellness Institute and Harvard University, recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Conversely, the research also suggests that consumption of caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee is associated with a lower risk.

Previous research has linked sugar-sweetened beverage consumption with weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, gout and coronary artery disease but this is the first to examine soda’s effect on stroke risk. The research analyzed soda consumption among 43,371 men who participated in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study between 1986 and 2008, and 84,085 women who participated in the Nurses' Health Study between 1980 and 2008. During that time, 2,938 strokes were documented in women while 1,416 strokes were documented in men.

In sugar-sweetened sodas, the sugar load may lead to rapid increases in blood glucose and insulin which, over time, may lead to glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, and inflammation. These physiologic changes influence atherosclerosis, plaque stability and thrombosis – all of which are risk factors of ischemic stroke. This risk for stroke appears higher in women than in men.

In comparison, coffee contains chlorogenic acids, lignans and magnesium, all of which act as antioxidants and may reduce stroke risk. When compared with one serving of sugar-sweetened soda, one serving of decaffeinated coffee was associated with a 10 percent lower risk of stroke.

In addition, study findings show that men and women who consumed more than one serving of sugar-sweetened soda per day had higher rates of high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol and lower physical activity rates. Those who drank soda more frequently were also more likely to eat red meat and whole-fat dairy products. Men and women who consumed low-calorie soda had a higher incidence of chronic disease and a higher body mass index (BMI). The investigators controlled for these other factors in their analysis to determine the independent association of soda consumption on stroke risk.

Based on the findings of this research, individuals are encouraged to substitute other beverages for soda.

Source: EurekAlert

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Bringing Water into the Exam Hall can Help You Perform Better

There are numerous tips out there for students on how to do better in their exams in order to improve their grades. We often hear things like preparing well for the exam, having a good rest prior to the exam, being in a relaxed state of mind, coming early to the exam venue and so on. While all these may be good, there is a new and interesting one: bring water into the exam hall. Yes that’s it. You may be wondering why, but the reason is not farfetched.

Students who bring water into exams may improve their grade by keeping hydrated. This is according to research by Chris Pawson from the University of East London and his collaborators Sarah Doherty, Laura Martin, Ruth Soares and Caroline Edmonds from the University of East London and Mark Gardner from the University of Westminster.  The researchers recorded the behavior of 447 undergraduate students across three different cohorts in relation to whether students brought drinks, and the type of drinks they brought, into exams. Students who were in higher levels of the university degree were much more likely to bring drinks into the exam than those in their first year of undergraduate study.

The researchers related the marks attained by students in the exam to whether those students brought water into the exam. Importantly, they controlled for general ability using coursework marks to ensure that they were not simply assessing the possibility that more able students were more likely to bring water into the exam. The results showed that those who took water into the exam, and presumably consumed the water, did better in the exam than those who did not.

The reason behind this is not categorically clear but there is the possibility that water consumption may have a physiological effect on thinking functions that result in improved exam performance. There is also the possibility the possibility that consuming water may alleviate anxiety, which is known to have a negative effect on exam performance. However, further research is still needed to tease apart the explanations.

 Source: ScienceDaily

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Controversial Bird Flu Research: the Story so Far

Ever heard of the Influenza A virus subtype H5N1? Perhaps you may know it by its other common name – bird flu.  This virus evolved on chicken farms in China in the mid-1990s and by 2006 it had spread across Eurasia and as far as the UK and Nigeria. It is endemic and evolving in poultry in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Egypt. Since its emergence, it has killed 335 of the 584 people known to have caught it. This number is relatively small because the virus does not spread efficiently between humans. On the other hand, when it does spread, it can be very deadly: nearly 60 percent of infected humans died from the virus. For years now, research has suggested that any mutations that enhanced the virus’s ability to spread among humans would simultaneously make it less deadly.

Scientists Prove Otherwise

Working independently, two scientists - Yoshihiro Kawaoka from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center, in the Netherlands – were able to prove that the virus can mutate to spread easily among humans while remaining as deadly.  Ron Fouchier and colleagues passed a mutant H5N1 virus repeatedly among ferrets. Ferrets are used in flu studies because they react to flu viruses in a similar way to humans.  The virus picked up more mutations, which let it spread through air like ordinary flu, while staying just as lethal. However, the mutation made on the virus by Yoshihiro Kawaoka and colleagues made it spread easily through ferrets, though it barely made them ill.

Controversy Over Publication

 When the two experiments were submitted to journals (Yoshihiro submitting to Nature while Fouchier submitted to Science) for publication, it raised a lot of controversy. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), a top US biosecurity committee in December of 2011, asked that the full details not be published, for fear bioterrorists would recreate the mutant virus. The board also feared that publishing the details would prompt more laboratories to work on the viruses, making an accidental release more likely. It advised the journals to publish the works in redacted forms and that a means created to release full details to other scientists only on a need-to-know basis. Some virologists argued that such a mutation has yet to occur in nature and that if we helped the virus past that barrier artificially, then release it, we could be making a problem for ourselves that would not otherwise have happened.

However, proponents countered that the research shows H5N1 can evolve this way naturally and that threat of a global pandemic, were this mutated strain to arise in nature, is far greater than the threat of bioterrorism. Understanding what combination of mutations could transform H5N1 into a human pandemic virus, helps epidemiologists know what to watch out for in the wild, and gives them the advantage on preparing countermeasures.

So What Happens After?

The push to develop a mechanism to disseminate the full papers to researchers and health officials on a need-to-know basis was deemed impractical.  In February of 2012, the WHO threw its weight on the issue and recommended a full publication of both papers. Following that, on 30^th of March, 2012, the NSABB revised its earlier decision and also recommended full publication of the papers.

The NSABB said that its decision was informed by a new government policy that could facilitate earlier review of ‘dual-use’ research that can both benefit the public and be misused to threaten public health, agriculture or the environment. The policy, released on 29 March, 2012 makes it compulsory for the first time for all US federal research agencies to assess research proposals for their dual-use risk in cases where the research involves one of a list of dangerous pathogens specified by the policy. The dual-use rules came into force immediately, and agencies were given 90 days to report existing projects of dual-use risk to their parent agencies.

So far it appears the dust is beginning to settle down over the publication of the papers and the complete details of the experiments containing the mutations that made the virus more virulent will be made public. If the details are eventually made public, do we have any reason to be scared that the knowledge may be misused? Is there any chance a terrorist could make this virus and release it? The possibility seems very unlikely because the virus will also threaten the terrorist’s own people. Also, only a handful of labs are equipped enough to carry out such a research.

Over Cleanliness May be ‘Bad’ for Kids’ Immune System

The prevalence of antibiotics and anti-bacterials together with modern hygiene has significantly reduced the number of microbes we are exposed to.  It is thought that our immune system is supposed to develop by encountering microbes, so being too clean throws it out of whack as the immune system overreacts to minor attacks. Proponents of the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ have always thought that there is a correlation between the reduced amount of microbes we are exposed to and the rise in the rate of autoimmune diseases.

A recent study published in Nature found that mice raised germ-free are likely to have a more severe case of asthma and ulcerative colitis (a common form of inflammatory bowel disease), when compared to those raised under normal laboratory conditions. The researchers have identified a mechanism in mice that may explain the role of exposure to microbes in the development of asthma and inflammatory bowel disease.

The research shows that in mice, exposure to microbes in early life can reduce the body’s inventory of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells. The iNKT cells help to fight infection but can also turn on the body, causing a range of disorders such as asthma or inflammatory bowel disease.

The researchers induced two groups of mice to develop forms of asthma or ulcerative colitis. The two groups of mice are: the germ-free (GF) mice, which are raised in a sterile environment, and the specific-pathogen-free mice raised under normal laboratory conditions. GF mice had more iNKT cells in their lungs and developed more severe disease symptoms, indicating that exposure to microbes was somehow influencing iNKT cell levels and making the GF mice more susceptible to inflammatory diseases. The study also found that a lack of exposure in early life could not be compensated for by introducing the GF mice to a broader range of microbes in adulthood indicating that the age of exposure is also important.

Although the study provides evidence to support the hygiene hypothesis, it should be noted that human children cannot live in an environment as germ-free as mice in a sterile lab. So it is not yet clear if this effect will be the same to real children in our world.







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Hyenas like Many Christians Observe Lent Too

Lent is an observance in the liturgical year of many Christian denominations, lasting a period of approximately six weeks and leading up to Easter.  During Lent, many of the faithful commit to fasting or giving up certain types of luxuries as a form of penitence. Common practices may include abstaining from meat, eating only one full meal each day, and fasting entirely one day each week.

Like many Christians, hyenas give up eating certain foods during Lent. Research in Ethiopia suggests that Lent forces spotted hyenas to change their diets. Do not think that the Ethiopians may have succeeded in converting hyenas to their faith; they only deprived the hyenas of butcher scraps. Hyenas are supremely adaptable mammals. As well as being good hunters, they are also opportunistic scavengers. The heavily Orthodox population gave up meat for Lent forcing hyenas to hunt down donkeys instead of scavenging outside butcher shops. Donkeys are a common livestock animal in northern Ethiopia and an easy target for the hyenas because they are kept outside at night.

According to Discover Magazine, the research team collected hyena feces and identified all the animals found in them. Hyenas are capable of eating and digesting all parts of their prey except hair and hooves. The results showed that when humans stop buying, eating and discarding animal products the hyenas' eating habits change significantly: before Lent, 14.8% of hyena droppings contained donkey hairs, during Lent this increased to 33.1%, falling again to 22.2% once the fast was over.