Sparing Piscine Pain

"God put these animals on the earth for us to survive on. Whoever's coming out with 'fish are tortured', or 'fish feel pain', they're not playing with a full deck."
"I don't want to be rude."
"[The tanks at Abrams Seafood, Panama City Florida, containing ice and water above freezing] kills them instantly. They're not moving around."
Greg Abrams, Florida commercial fisherman

"I have argued that there is as much evidence that fish feel pain and suffer as there is for birds and mammals - and more than there is for human neonates and preterm babies."
"Whatever that means for the fish. It's not that they experience the pain that we do, which is more sophisticated."
"It's not a swift death. It's not much fun watching a fish flopping around, not breathing normally."
"The brain is still alert [for fish in chill tanks] though the fish have stopped moving. It can take several minutes for fish to die in icy slush, with some fish still showing signs of gill cover movements five hours after entering the ice slurry."
Victoria Braithwaite, professor of fisheries and biology, Penn State University

"You have a catch come on board with two million creatures, and you're going to take each one of them and say, 'Let's change how you're dying'. It's impossible."
"You're not changing the way that the Russians are trawling or the way that the Japanese are trawling."
David Krebs, founder, Ariel Seafoods, Destin, Florida

The hook of a fishing lure is stuck in the upper jaw of this rainbow trout. Whether the animal feels pain is not verified beyond any doubt, according to a new study.  Credit: Alexander Schwab

If the public considers the possible effects on fish when they're caught and hauled out of their natural environment to asphyxiate on their way to dying, the negligible afterthought borne of social custom considering fish to be devoid of feeling or emotion is that it just happens; they die and become food. Not that they die in agony, or that they die desperately attempting to save themselves from death because they have been imprinted by nature to struggle to survive, as do all living organisms.

We argue to ourselves that their brains are too primitive, too underdeveloped and rudimentary to account for feelings such as pain, let alone a primal group memory of tactics to avoid death. We are sentient, they are not, therefore we feel the agony of pain and of impending death, and they cannot and do not. Scientists, biologists and researchers have been studying the issue and it's been years since they reached a conclusion that nothing could be further from the truth.

According to one academic, brains of certain ray-finned fish are "sufficiently complex to support sentience", while other academics have written that fish and other aquatic species "meet the criteria for sentience, including the ability to experience positive and negative emotions". In 2003, Professor Braithwaite co-authored a study suggesting fish anatomy is sufficiently complex to enable them to experience pain and discomfort. A later book, Do Fish Feel Pain? consolidated her conclusion.

In an article that ran in the storytelling studio Topic, writer Cat Ferguson posits that the Japanese fish-killing technique, named Ike Jime is not only more humane than other types of slaughter, but it also results in better-tasting fish products; stress and pain hormones will not have 'spoiled' the taste of the fish, as a result of an instant kill, bypassing prolonged death resulting in the agony of killing pain.

In acknowledging that fish feel pain, the question now is how would that knowledge impact the fishing industry, and presumably the demands made by a consuming public wanting to know that the fish products they consume are humanely killed before processing? To satisfy consumer demand governments would be pressed to respond with regulations around animal slaughter, much as is done with livestock. That would impact on trawlers and fish farms but commercial trawlers?

Over 80 percent of the seafood North Americans consume is imported and even though a large proportion of it is actually caught by local fishermen, it is often sent overseas to be processed, and then returned to North America, frozen and prepared. Commercial fishing boats are capable of netting a million or more fish at one swoop. Those large commercial trawlers kill their haul by allowing the fish to asphyxiate on deck, which takes several minutes before they die.

A World Bank report estimates that aquaculture will become the supplier of over 60 percent of fish for human consumption by 2030. That same aquaculture that is making an effort to reverse its reputation for polluting the environment and spreading (fish) disease. A senior research associate with Freshwater Institute, a West Virginia research facility, speaks of their mission to create recirculating aquaculture systems to alleviate fish stress through to the stage of slaughter.

There, at Freshwater, the group linked to the Conservation Fund, employs equipment that kills fish instantly with a pneumatic piston to the brain, where 15 seconds is all it takes from the salmon's tank removal to slaughter; a humane slaughter designed to comfort consumers as much as to regard the welfare of the fish itself. The process at Freshwater "actually leads to a high-quality product at the end", states senior research associate John Davidson.

Whether or not fish feel pain has been debated for years. But the balance of evidence says yes. Now the question is, what do we do about it? (redbrickstock.com / Alamy)

Solutions To Food Waste

"Your hands get kind of gross. There's dressing and cooked mushrooms and that's gross. Or if you see a rat, that's kind of gross."
"There's a box, then there's produce, then there's another box and there's produce, and box and produce."
"There are absolutely things that look good enough to buy in the store. Often I'm confused why they're in the garbage."
"You go out at night, you have your headlamps and your little grocery bags. You're looking into these dumpsters and they're absolutely full of food."
"You get over it quickly [initial distaste at riffling through discarded food in a dumpster] because it kind of feels beautiful. You're not just doing something good for yourself, but you are doing something good for the world because less food is going to waste."
"Some people just don't understand because it sounds gross. When I first told my father I was going dumpster diving, you know, he was ashamed of me ... He said, 'I can lend  you some money'. And I said: 'I enjoy this. This is something I want to do. I think it's good." 
Chelsea Power, University of Victoria, Really Garbage Cookbook co-author

Emily Kirbyson, left, and Rebecca Rogerson look through a garbage bin behind a grocery story for produce and other edibles near or just past their expiry date in an effort to create a cookbook on dumpster diving for their thesis work at the University of Victoria.   Chad Hipolito/Postmedia

During her undergraduate years, Chelsea Power met another student who had joined a dumpster diving club. As a university student with limited financial means she, like many others, found it difficult to pay for her tuition, her living costs and to be able to afford good wholesome food. People in straitened circumstances, those with low incomes -- and post-secondary students not living at home have discovered that there are alternatives to visiting food banks; visiting supermarket dumpsters.

According to Ms. Power, she has had the experience of coming across some grocers who obligingly help people looking for unwanted, discarded food, offering more than they find in dumpsters, bringing out from inside the store more for them to select from. On the other hand, there are different responses from different people, some of whom can be downright mean and nasty that someone is trying to advantage themselves at no cost by going out of their way to secure food no one else wants.

Ms. Power's attitude about wasted food is one that could be emulated by many more people, held back by a feeling of shame. She feels that the food is perfectly fine, it's healthy and nutritious and shouldn't end up in a landfill when it could be put to good use by needy or simply practical people. From that perspective it's downright criminal for supermarkets to discard food that may be disfigured or no longer at the peak of perfection. Instead of placing the food out as discarded waste, food that remains edible and in good shape should be placed on racks in back of the store to enable people easy access.

Emily Kirbyson holds a bag of produce and other edibles found behind a grocery store. Chad Hipolito/Postmedia

Ms. Power along with Emily Kirbyson and Rebecca Rogerson -- both graduate students at University of Victoria like herself -- plan to present their waste-food project and recipe book at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, an annual conference gathering in thousands of academics and taking place in Regina this year. They will speak of the frustrations and rewards of riffling through discarded produce, coming across vegetables, fruit and herbs, cheese, close-to-expiry milk layered between cardboard boxes that have been tossed in with the discarded food.

Their Really Garbage Cookbook describes the pact of an increasing group of garbage foragers living in cities, and the knowledge they share that inside most dumpsters behind a grocery or bakery rests a fount of good-to-fair food destined for a garbage heap which their intervention could free up for personal use. A 2009 Supreme Court decision made it clear that anything set out for garbage collection will not legally be considered private.

The book, still being put together, presents anecdotes, food collection guides, poetry and recipes. There are tips on how to select a dumpster (avoid big box supermarkets), when to venture out (week days preferably) and how to prepare the food that has been rescued (cleansing it with antibacterial soap), and to practise civil etiquette; to restrain yourself from taking everything presentable in favour of leaving some for others to 'rescue' and make good use of.

Rebecca Rogerson and Emily Kirbyson. Chad Hipolito/Postmedia

Interfering With Nature's Designs

"Researchers recently studied three islands to record the effects of rabbit invasion [on the Kerguelen Islands]. The island of Grande Terre has many rabbits, while Ile Guillou’s rabbits were eradicated in 1994, and Ile Australia never had to contend with the beasties at all. In areas where rabbits thrived (and they did, without predators) native plant diversity declined and burrows made the land susceptible to erosion. In particular the researchers noted that soil fungi were very different on the two islands that had or have rabbits. Even 20 years after the rabbits left, Ile Guillou’s plant and fungal communities resembled that of Grande Terre."

"The long-lasting effects could have come from disturbance of the soil through burrowing, rather than any specific rabbit-additions such as feces. A different disturbed soil site on Ile Australia showed some similarity to the soil fungal communities on the rabbit-affected islands. Native plants might be slow to grow back after such disturbance."

"However, the study does point out that some subtle effects of an invasive species can persist for a long time after the problem animal or plant is gone. Helping an ecosystem recover from such a change may be trickier than previously thought."

Smithsonian

"The big lesson is that sometimes we can have a strong human impact even in places that are very, very isolated."
"Our research shows that we absolutely have to act immediately. There is no lag time between the arrival of these invasives and the impact."
G. Francesco Ficetola, biologist, University of Milan

The European rabbit looks harmless, but in the Kerguelen Islands, the species became invasive. A new study finds that the effect of the rabbits on soil fungus lasts even long after they are gone.

There is remote and isolated and then there is truly and really isolated-remote on this planet of ours. At one time Antarctica was the sole place left on Earth, an entire continent, that hadn't been 'discovered'. Its presence was known to whalers, but explorers from Britain and Norway had not yet set their sights on travelling to that remote region and undergoing privation in the extreme South Pole geography to map it out and discover the lay of the terrain, its mountains, glaciers and environmental conditions.

As it happens, there is a geographic area, one of isolated islands, discovered by a French expedition in the late 16th Century, acknowledged to be a French possession now, that was once a way-station for sealers and whalers and their hardy crews. Whales were once hunted for their baleen, the long bone-like structures through which they sift the marine life they scoop up as fodder for those great beasts; the baleen used for Victorian-era ladies' undergarment stays. Seals were traditionally hunted for food, household oil and sealskin garments by the Inuit, and in the 19th Century represented a much-in-demand European trade item.

On the Kerguelen Islands, literally at the world's end in the southern Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Antarctica, there is a research field station, and not much more, for its climate is extreme, and the landscape is unremittingly harsh and windswept. The islands’ average daytime high temperatures nudge at 11.5° C (about 50° F) including during the summer. It experiences, 300 days a year, rain, snow or sleet, and sustained winds of up to 150 kilometers per hour (93 mph). The environment is, to say the least, unforgiving.

But rabbits found it to their liking; once brought to the islands, purportedly in an effort to make the landscape more interesting, and possibly also to provide an alternate fresh food source for sealers and whalers, who made the islands a way-station; rabbits thrived and proliferated, and in so doing, like any introduced species alien to the environment, found no natural enemies and sufficient nutrition growing out of the soil to sustain their colonies, and then some.

( Worm That Turned (CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons))

Scientists, in 1974, who felt the remote archipelago represented a promising spot from which to observe the transit of Venus as it regularly passed before the sun, installed an observatory on the 93-mile-wide Grande Terre, the main island. They too were linked with bringing rabbits with them, an estimated five; again as a potential food source for the future. By the time the researchers left the island, the rabbits had begun their work of reproducing in sufficient numbers to alter the ecosystem. 

 

That, in any event is what a report recently published in the journal Science Advances, has noted, based on sediment cores drilled from a small lake in Grande Terre's central plateau. The question of how invasive species change ecosystems intrigued the scientists who examined those cores, and the Kerguelen Islands represented a natural laboratory, distant from civilization and its presentation perfect for investigation.

 

The biologists extracted DNA from the sediment cores and pieced together a timeline of what lived on the island over the course of hundreds of years, with the genetic data indicating the central plateau of Grande Terre with a stable ecosystem until about 1940, when the rabbits reached that area on the main island. A cushion-like plant named Azorella Selago dominated the area originally, but with the introduction of rabbits, the presence of native plants diminished and erosion began its destructive work.

Now, to add to the severely deleterious effect of the exploding rabbit population, climate change has also entered the picture, to impact doubly negatively on the original ecosystem. Dr. Kerguelens points out that what happens on an isolated group of islands is reflected by alterations in ecosystems throughout the entire planet; with the arrival of invaders, normalcy and stability erode.

The Kerguelen Islands are an important breeding ground for Antarctic Fur Seals. Credit: Liam Quin

Deadly Technological Advances

"After 75 years of driving, my father thought that when he took the key with him when he left the car, the car would be off."
"The plants inside the house lost their leaves [from the effects of the carbon monoxide level]."
"My dad isn't going to be the last one who passes away from this [mistaken belief that a vehicle has been shut off when it is still running]."
Doug Schaub, Florida

A keyless ignition pictured in this 2004 file photo.
Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images

The level of carbon monoxide that flooded Fred Schaub's Florida home when his Toyota RAV4 was left for the night in the garage attached to his home registered 30 times what humans are known to tolerate. He left his garage, entered his house holding the wireless key fob to his vehicle with the impression that his car was no longer running. It took twenty-nine hours for the carbon monoxide to overwhelm him and he died in his sleep.

With the technological advance in vehicle design where a keyless-ignition car runs so smoothly and silently that people are unaware it is still running when they believe they've shut it off, car owners inadvertently exposed to lethal amounts of carbon monoxide when the gas oozes silently and with no warning odours into their home, have suffered grave injuries, many with brain damage, and in worst-case scenarios, have died.

The introduction of the new key-less ignition technology took place in 1997 when Mercedes-Benz filed its patent, introducing it as a featured advance in its German-produced vehicles a year later. It is a feature now common in many vehicle brands, where drivers carry a fob to transmit a radio signal to start a car with the touch of a button. Elderly drivers in particular have a tendency to believe that a car has stopped running, after a lifetime of the ritual of turning and removing a key to shut off the motor.

The serious issue of believing a car is no longer running and leaving it to leak poisonous gas into the interior of a home was addressed by the Society of Automotive Engineers seven years ago when it recommended that features such as a series of beeps would go a long way to alerting drivers their vehicles were still running though their key fob was neither in nor near the car. Another recommendation was to have the engine shut off automatically.

A regulation was proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the United States that would require a software alteration that would cost mere pennies for each vehicle. The agency failed to press the matter when the auto industry came out opposing any such change, leaving regulators to rely on car manufacturers to incorporate warning features voluntarily in their products. Some automakers have incorporated the suggested features, while others have failed to.

Toyota, for example installed a system of three audible signals outside the car and one inside as an alert to drivers exiting a vehicle that the motor is still running. The company chose to reject a recommendation from its own engineers that more robust warning signals were required, such as flashing lights or a unique warning tone. Models produced by Toyota, including the Lexus, have been involved in almost half the carbon monoxide fatalities and injuries on record.

In its defence, Toyota states its keyless-ignition system "meets or exceeds all relevant federal safety standards". In contrast, Ford's keyless vehicles incorporate a feature to automatically turn the engine off after a period of idling exceeding 30 minutes if the key fob is not in the vehicle. There is a modest expense involved in retrofitting older vehicles to reduce this hazard; $5 each vehicle to install the automatic shutoff mechanism for General Motors.

Exposed to a proliferation of such cases, a Florida fire chief undertook his own solution, by handing out carbon monoxide detectors to drivers. One might think logically that car manufacturers would respond positively to the upgrade recommendations, given the mounting litigation.

Keyless cars can become dangerous when drivers exit their cars without realizing they're running.

BMW

The Itty-Bitty Spider

"It is also hoped ultimately to assemble complete case histories of several individual nests [of trap-door spiders]." 1977 report
"[To track and identify] A life-cycle of perhaps twenty years notwithstanding."
"I wanted to know how long the spiders lived."
"Although adult nests frequently have their doors and twig-lines torn off [presumably by birds] none appear to have been seriously affected by this. The spiders reattach their doors, sometimes upside down or back-to-front and attach new twig-lines." 1978 report.
Barbara Main, arachnid researcher, Australia

"We spend three hours on our knees as Barbara checks each burrow to see if it's occupied or not"
"She observes, with a mild air of concern, how few new trap door burrows there are and how unseasonably dry the reserve is [where they are located]."
"Inside, I can just see the spider, which has pulled a veil of silk lining half across its burrow. Under my breath, I introduce myself and wish her well."
Vicki Laurie, Australian Broadcasting Corp. reporter, 2013

"She was going to finish the study when number 16 died. She was going to write it up as a big thing."
"She [the legendary, long-lived southwest Australian Gaius villosus trap-door spider] was cut down in her prime. It took a while to sink in, to be honest."
"Number 16 was out in the bush, which is even more impressive because we all know that animals living captivity can live longer, perhaps, than those in the wild."
"We can be inspired by an ancient megalomorph spider and the rich biodiversity she embodied."
Leanda Mason, ecologist, Curtin University, 2016

This is a female trapdoor spider from a longterm population study in Australia. Another spider from the same study, called Number 16, died at the age of 43. It was the oldest known spider the world. (Submitted by Leanda Mason)

A spider, a tiny, blind, secretive spider living to eat and to breed and doing so in the perpetuation of her species for 43 years. Living in a minuscule burrow she herself dug before she was a year old, after having lived in her mother's burrow for the first six months of her life, without once exiting it, until finally her mother did and Spider 16 and her dozens of sibling spiders also left, to embark on a life of their own, for as long as they could survive through the vagaries of weather conditions and predators.

Spider 16 was named thus by zoologist Barbara Main in 1975, when the spider was already a year old. She had built her nest just as her mother before her had done, as an infinitesimally small tunnel-burrow, lined with silk and where she would live in the soil in the dark in a hollow sufficiently large to contain her tiny body, and no larger. As she grew she would enlarge the burrow, but it would always be tiny because she was, a fraction of an inch across.

This first home would be Spider 16's only and permanent home within the North Bungulla Reserve in Australia. After lining her burrow with silk, she wove a door of silk to stretch across the mouth of her home, and attached it with a hinge to one side of the opening. Then she hauled countless tiny twigs to the doorway's edge one after another, laying them precisely to radiate from the opening like blades of a fan, from inherited memory.

Spider 16 retreated within her burrow and there she stayed, after closing the door that would only be opened when vibration above betrayed to the tiny blind animal that something was moving among the twigs at which point she leaped out and drew into her nest an ant or a tiny beetle or mayfly. She is one of dozens of trap door spider species in the wilderness areas of the Australian wheat belt.

She started being tracked when Barbara Main set out to find, label and track her species in 1975, and placed beside her nest a small, very small, metal sign engraved with the numeral "16", identifying the spider as one of hundreds that would eventually be discovered and personalized with a number. This zoologist with the University of Western Australia marking every burrow she found of Gaius villosus, then reported her intention in 1977 to the International Congress of Arachnology of discovering their longevity potential.

Gaia, of course, is what we call Mother Earth. All of the burrows with their spider-residents were located within a few metres of one another, close to an old gravel pit, under an Acacia tree. The scientist noted when Spider 16's mother and siblings died, but number 16 lived on. Eventually a reporter with ABC broadcasting heard of an elderly scientist who had tracked a spider for four decades and asked to accompany her on her next foray.

It was explained to the reporter that females lived in their burrows, never emerging but briefly to bring in prey,  until they died. And on their death no other spider would take possession of the empty nest. Soon after their joint expedition to assess the spiders' health and presence which Dr. Main had done for forty years, an aspiring doctoral candidate joined them as an aide to Dr. Main who continued to catalogue the generations of spiders.

The zoologist, however, finally retired in her late 80s last year, succumbing to ill health and the inability to get around as she once did to pursue her investigations. Mason, studying for her doctorate in ecology, inherited the project and continued to study the spiders until in 2016 she went out for field work to the reserve to check on Spider 16. To discover that the twigs around the burrow door were in disarray.

A tiny hole was seen in the centre of the silk door. Lifting the door, Ms. Mason lowered an endoscope into the burrow and her suspicions were confirmed. A parasitic wasp had in all likelihood broken through the silk seal to lay its eggs in 16's body. And the venerable spider became a sustaining meal for the developing wasps as they matured from egg to larvae to wasp.

Spider 16 had lived for a remarkable and unexpected 43 years before she succumbed to the order of nature. Male trapdoor spiders, on the other  hand, die as soon as they impregnate a female That too is nature's order.

Number 16, the world's oldest spider, spent most of its life inside its burrow. (Submitted by Leanda Mason)

Creation Interruptus 

"Brain organoids can be produced much as other 3D multicellular structures resembling eye, gut, liver, kidney and other human tissues have been built. By adding appropriate signalling factors, aggregates of pluripotent stem cells (which have the ability to develop into any cell type) can differentiate and self-organize into structures that resemble certain regions of the human brain.^"
"Currently, if research on human tissue occurs outside a living person, only the processes of obtaining, storing, sharing and identifying the tissue fall under the regulations and guidelines that limit what interventions can be conducted on people. As brain surrogates become larger and more sophisticated, the possibility of them having capabilities akin to human sentience might become less remote. Such capacities could include being able to feel (to some degree) pleasure, pain or distress; being able to store and retrieve memories; or perhaps even having some perception of agency or awareness of self."
Nita A. Farahany, Henry T. Greely and 15 colleagues   Nature.com

A researcher dissects slices of human brain tissue.   Credit: Darragh Mason Field/Barcroft Images/Getty

What makes us human? What distinguishes us as humans? What is notable about our functionality? Our brains, the seat and the source of our mind, our thoughts, our emotions, our existence. The body is the carapace within which the brain sits, and where neurons send and receive messages connecting
the brain to all our other body organs, tissues, extremities, appendages. The brain knits everything together, it is the control room organizing and ensuring that everything works as it should from our eyes to our feet.

We have brains, therefore we exist. It is the source of our existence.

What precisely is it that exists in a brain that had its birth in a laboratory petri dish, separate and apart from the scaffolding of tissue, muscle and bone that we call our bodies. How does a brain become energized, what is its fuel without blood and nutritional glucose derived from food the body provides as fuel as it functions in tandem with the brain, one reliant on the other? As a vital organ, the brain has remained impervious to scientists' full understanding of its foundation of the mind and the human soul.

But modern technology and bioscience have combined to challenge nature and her designs in hopes of fully opening up the pathways of that design through experimentation to revealing the architecture and the synaptic connections of consciousness and flexibility of thought, the mechanisms of the body and the mutual dependence for existence of the two in a basic symbiosis of pure existence.

Which has led neuroscientists to create proto brains in their laboratories. It is only a matter of time before those created miniature brains awaken to consciousness. And this obvious potential creates a full-blown crisis of ethics and responsibility in the steady march toward a boundary whose consequences are unimaginable in their scope and outcomes, hitherto the stuff of science fiction but moving resolutely toward reality.

Recently a group of 17 neuroscientists and medical ethicists posed their case in the journal Nature. The work that scientists have embarked upon in laboratories around the world use stem cells to enable the growth of multicellular structures resembling human organs such as the eye, the gut, the liver and the kidney. Those very same techniques are used as well in the growth of brain "organoids"; simplified, miniaturized versions of living brain tissue.

Apart from the !eureka! moments of experiment and success, some of these organs grown from stem cells might see a future in human parts replacement by implant through surgery when patients have a need for transplants. Transplanting a brain? Taking an evolving consciousness and giving it a new home? Brain death no longer a sentence, but an opportunity to revive the failing body with a new brain? Who might that recipient turn out as? Certainly not the original occupant of the body.

Transplanting of these organoids for the present have been undertaken by brain scientists for observation and a fuller effort to comprehend where the science is leading. To understand how the brain develops, how its components interact and what can conceivably go awry in psychiatric and neurological disorders. "To ensure the success and social acceptance of this research long term, an ethical framework must be forged now", they wrote.

They posit a number of queries: Should brain organoids, or non-human creatures in which human brain cells have been installed have regulatory protection acknowledging the potential of achieving greater awareness? Should this potential lead to the creation of chimeras -- involving, as example, chimpanzees or monkeys implanted with a human brain -- to be absolutely forbidden? Should organoids or animals result from these processes who would be the legal owner?

"There are so many issues we need to think about. The best evidence that the time has come to discuss these matters is the active engagement of scientists at the front lines", observed Henry T. Greely, one of essay's drafters. Who added that generally "It's a reflex" among scientists to resist any discussions relating to hypotheticals which could conceivably place strictures on their work.

A 3D human-brain assembloid derived from stem cells.    Credit: Pasca Lab/Stanford University

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream....

"In a landmark study of human sleep deprivation, University of Chicago researchers followed a group of student volunteers who slept only four hours nightly for six consecutive days. The volunteers developed higher blood pressure and higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and they produced only half the usual number of antibodies to a flu vaccine. The sleep-deprived students also showed signs of insulin resistance — a condition that is the precursor of type 2 diabetes and metabolic slowdown. All the changes were reversed when the students made up the hours of sleep they had lost."
"The Chicago research helps to explain why chronic sleep debt raises the risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes."
Harvard Health

Getty Images

"Because sleep is when the body and especially the brain regenerate and repair themselves, sleeplessness has been identified as a factor in an endless list of afflictions, including hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, memory loss, bipolar disorder, reduced immunity, mood swings, impaired carbohydrate metabolism and increased heart-rate variability. Not to mention depression and substance abuse and the impairment of memory, self-expression and the ability to read emotions in others. Oh, and a hundred thousand motor-vehicle accidents a year."
Ian Brown, The Globe and Mail

It's a familiar condition, lack of sufficient sleep, and few of us link that congenital (for some) condition with actual health harm that can be quantified and which in the final analysis not only makes us miserable emotionally, but incapable of operating our bodies functionally. The road to extremely ill health, including depression and ill temper and social isolation is paved with many sleep-deprived nights that are too short and deprive us of optimum health conditions. The rough rule of thumb is that we need one hour of sleep for every two hours of waking activity.

Science and those in the field of health sciences, have been warning us for quite a long time that we are short-changing ourselves by not sleeping adequate hours. Whether we're engaged in shift work or night-time work, or just try to manage too many activities in too-short time-frames, losing out on sleep as a result, we're heading for trouble with insufficient sleep to allow our brain and bodies the time needed for restoration, repair and rest. That includes infants to adults, to the elderly retired.

Inability to function as one should leads to irritability and frustration, and in the long term leads into impaired health of a truly frightening level. There is nothing particularly new about these findings. It has long been well known that the effects of sleep deprivation can be horribly injurious to the human mind and body. It is why sleep deprivation has been used as a tool of torture for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. Simple observation has led to the conclusion that humans cannot function effectively with lack of rest.

On the good news front, however, people who are unable to ameliorate their sleep schedules by planning to change their habits can take heart from the results of a new study that concluded if people lacking sufficient night-time sleep every day during the week, managed to sleep in late over the weekend, it could make a substantial difference on making up sleep deficit. Individuals, according to the research published in the Journal of Sleep Research, who made up their deficit with weekend long sleeps, were found to have no raised risk for mortality.

"Sleep duration is important for longevity", points out Torbjörn Åkerstedt, first author of the study, at the Stress Research Institute, Stockholm University, and Karolinska Institute. Data was collected from over 38,000 adults through a lifestyle and medical survey in 1997, throughout Sweden, with a fallow up of 13 years, that made use of a national death registry. "I suspected there might be some modification if you included also weekend sleep, or day-off sleep", noted Dr. Åkerstedt.

The research results revealed, with factors linked to gender, body mass index, smoking, physical activity and shift work accounted for, that those under age 65 who managed only five sleeping hours nightly, seven days a week, had a 65%  higher mortality rate, compared to others who slept six or seven hours nightly. The increased risk of death, however, skipped those who slept five or fewer  hours during the work week, but slept in on weekend mornings to total eight or more hours of sleep.


So while consistent sleep deficits represent a true and alarming health hazard, it gives little comfort to know that reversing the order and having too much sleep nightly can also prove harmful to human health. Those individuals who consistently oversleep -- sleep for eight or more hours nightly, seven days a week, were discovered almost equally vulnerable, with a 25% higher mortality rate compared with those who kept to six or seven hours a day.

Symptoms When an individual does not get enough sleep to feel awake and alert, they begin to experience symptoms of sleep deprivation. The main symptom of ongoing sleep loss is excessive daytime sleepiness, but other symptoms include: yawning moodiness fatigue irritability depressed mood difficulty learning new concepts forgetfulness inability to concentrate or a "fuzzy" head lack of motivation clumsiness increased appetite and carbohydrate cravings reduced sex drive Effects Sleep deprivation can negatively affect a range of systems in the body. It can have the following impact: Not getting enough sleep prevents the body from strengthening the immune system and producing more cytokines to fight infection. This can mean a person can take longer to recover from illness as well as having an increased risk of chronic illness. Sleep deprivation can also result in an increased risk of new and advanced respiratory diseases. A lack of sleep can affect body weight. Two hormones in the body, leptin and ghrelin, control feelings of hunger and satiety, or fullness. The levels of these hormones are affected by sleep. Sleep deprivation also causes the release of insulin, which leads to increased fat storage and a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Sleep helps the heart vessels to heal and rebuild as well as affecting processes that maintain blood pressure and sugar levels as well as inflammation control. Not sleeping enough increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Insufficient sleep can affect hormone production, including growth hormones and testosterone in men.  Medical News Today

My, Grandma, What a Big Brain You Have!

"The findings are intriguing because they suggest that some aspects of social complexity are more likely to be consequences rather than causes of our large brain size, and that the large human brain is more likely to stem from ecological problem-solving and cumulative culture than it is from social manoeuvring."
Dr Mauricio González-Forero, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, Scotland

Human brains are about three times as large as those of our early australopithecines ancestors that lived 4 million to 2 million years ago, and for years, scientists have wondered how our brains got so big.  Credit: NIH, NIDA

"Compared to almost all other animals, human brains are larger as a percentage of body weight. And since the emergence of the first species in our Homo genus (Homo habilis) about 2 million years ago, the human brain has doubled in size. And when compared to earlier ancestors, such as australopithecines that lived 4 million to 2 million years ago, our brains are three times as large. For years, scientists have wondered what could account for this increase."
Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer, LiveScience

There are various hypothesis over the conundrum posed by the fact that humans have huge brains for the size of their bodies. Huge in comparison to other animals. The scientifically unschooled might simply point out that of all other animals that exist in this world of ours, it is humans that exhibit the most profound capabilities of thought, observation, reasoned action and response to environmental stimuli, among other attributes. We alter our environment in ways no other animal does, using the raw natural resources surrounding us for shelter, food and protection.

Other animals, however, do all of these same things, responding to their environment, seeking out food, shelter and safety specific to their species. Scientists speculate and have the evidence to point to, that the human brain evolved from being less physically prominent to what it is today in response to humans' primal encounters in survival, indicating the need to use resources, negotiate social interactions, acquire speech and language, and manipulate their environment, particularly as waves of hominids migrated from one geographical location to another.

The human brain typically weighs around three pounds and utilizes a full twenty percent of the energy the body requires to furnish all its needs. It is the evolution of the brain in response to various stimuli over time that piques the interest of scientists hoping to find definitive answers -- the ultimate reason why this transformation has taken place, why the human brain is roughly six times greater in size than it logically should be, contrasting it with other mammalian brains. 

And in the hope of finding answers it occurred to Mauricio Gonzles-Forero and Andy Gardner of St.Andrews University in Scotland that computer simulation might just produce the elusive answer. For their study they created a hypothetical population comprised only of females for simplicity purposes in facing their challenge in existence. Data was fed into the program relating to brain size and energy costs of maintaining the brain and reproductive organs Tasks were simulated to resemble environmental and social challenges held in brain evolution theories.

The task of the computer in assessing all these variables was to determine how pressures of specific challenges could lead to changes of brain size over time. The program was set to calculate the amount of energy females would invest in growing the brain as opposed to other organs and tissues, drawing on evolutionary theory. More robust mental demands had a tendency, predictably, to produce larger brains. 

According to computer results, some 60 percent of the effect boosting brain size resulted from an individual focusing on how they would react to environmental challenges singly, to find, store and prepare food and produce stone tools. An additional 30 percent was assigned to social cooperation in dealing with the environment; group activities such as hunting. The final ten percent was ascribed to competition between groups of people. The results of the study was published in the journal Nature.

A brain-evolution expert at Florida State University felt the work failed to assess the hypothesis of long standing that the development of language may have driven expansion of the brain. (Which feeds right into the present-day acknowledgement that learning more than one language expands brain power.) This was acknowledged by Gonzalez-Forero, explaining the language factor represents a cultural factor to be addressed in further studies on the enlarged brain size. 

Tough conditions are responsible for making the human brain disproportionately large, new research at the University of St Andrews has found.

Family, Home and Hearth

"After a discussion with your Mother, we have decided that you must leave this house immediately. You have 14 days to vacate. You will not be allowed to return. We will take whatever actions are necessary to enforce this decision."
"Michael Joseph Rotondo, You are hereby evicted from 408 Weatheridge Drive, Camillus, New York effective immediately. You have heretofore been our guest and there is no lease or agreement that gives you any right to stay here without our consent."
"A legal enforcement procedure will be instituted immediately if you do not leave by 15 March 2018."
Michael, here is $1,100 from us to you so you can find a place to stay."
"There are jobs available even for those with a poor work history like you. Get one -- you have to work! If you want help finding a place your Mother has offered to help."
Mark Rotondo

Christina and Mark Rotondo in court   Reuters

"I am just so outraged."
"[I had] never been expected to contribute to household expenses, or assist with chores and the maintenance of the premises."
"I don't see why they can't just, you know, wait a little bit for me to leave the house. [Six months is] a reasonable amount of time for someone who has been depending on persons for support."
Michael Rotondo

Michael Rotondo (left) at his eviction proceeding in Syracuse, New York. His parents, Mark and Christina, confer with their lawyer in the court gallery behind.  Douglas Dowty, The Syracuse Newspapers via AP 

Upstate New York State Supreme Court Justice Donald Greenwood informed Mark and Christina Rotondo that their lawyer would be instructed to draft an eviction order giving their son Michael reasonable time to vacate the home they no longer wished to share with him. They had, in fact, been resentful of their 30-year-old, unemployed son living with them for quite some time.

A situation not made any easier by the fact that he would not speak with them, nor do anything remotely useful around the house; much less that he paid no rent for his accommodation.

The couple's request for an eviction order was granted by the judge who also indicated that adult protective services would be engaged to check on matters in the home that appeared to him to be rather concerning. As for their son, Michael Rotondo informed the judge he was well aware his parents wished him to leave their home, arguing that as a member of the family he felt entitled to six months additional time to make alternative arrangements for himself.

When Michael Rotondo spoke to the media he pointed out that he did his own laundry and provided for his own food. His exasperated parents, feeling it was beyond time their adult son became an adult rather than a recluse who felt no urge to find employment and to be responsible for himself, preferring to live in a bedroom in their split-level ranch home, gave him an initial note requesting he leave in March, repeated it in February, and then again when their son made no move to honour their request.

They felt finally driven to taking legal means when he ignored all their requests, including that he remove his Volkswagen from outside their home, despite offering financial assistance to have it repaired to working order. The eviction order was their last desperate attempt to force their son to take steps toward overdue responsibility for himself. In view of a gaggle of curious reporters, the Rotondo son engaged the judge in a 30-minute verbal sparring, when the judge suggested he address his parents directly, and he refused.

"It really seems kind of outrageous that someone in this day and age could be in someone else's home for six months" before they agree to leave, when requested to do so, remarked the judge. "I want you out of that household." At the hearing's conclusion, the son invited television camera crews to meet him outside the court where he responded to questions and stated baldly that he is not prepared to leave home where he occupies a bedroom, will not speak to his parents and has a business.

Refusing to respond when asked what the business was other than to state tersely "My business is my business".

According to a recent study, an estimated 22.5 percent -- 12 million -- Americans between 24 and 36 years of age live at home with their parents, a notable increase from the 14 percent that did so in 2005.

They all, obviously, believe wholeheartedly in the old adage that "There's no place like home", unwilling to make one of their very own.

The home near Syracuse, New York that is at the centre of the family dispute   Google Maps

The Young: Pint-Sized, Ambition-Large 

"Powerlifting helps children develop connective tissue, including ligaments and tendons, muscles and bones, and also helps to build a foundational strength."
Tom DeLong, director, science education, National Council for Certified Personal Trainers

"Sometimes when I'm lifting, I will see a kid staring at me like I'm some famous person and then they go ask their parents if they can do stuff like me."
"A lot of people look at a sport like powerlifting and think that girls can't do that and I want to prove them wrong."
"I don't just like powerlifting; I love it. It makes me feel strong, and like I can do anything."
Etta Nichols, 11, Spokane, Washington

"Lifting has helped Etta realize her strengths."
"The key is the right coach."
Chet Nichols, Etta's father

"Not only is she physically strong and co-ordinated for her age but she has learned a lot about herself through powerlifting -- how hard she can push herself, how she can accomplish things she puts her mind to and how success is not given, it's earned."
Eric Cafferty, Etta's powerlifting coach

"As both a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and a mother, this would not be my first choice of an activity for my child."
"[The potential dangers of the sport include] putting too much stress on the growth centers and causing growth anomalies."
Dr. Abigail Allen, chief of pediatric orthopedic surgery, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York 

"It has become very en vogue for young ladies to be athletic and strong", observed Martin Drake, national chairman of the Amateur Athletic Union Strength Sports, of the trickle-down effect from adult gyms where children are now being encouraged to emulate adults in powerlifting. The industry itself is wholly given to enthusiasm over introducing children to weight lifting and encouraging them to excel. Young, very young girls become celebrated for their training and physical endurance, enabling them to lift weights two times their actual body weight; quite the feat indeed.

Girls Who Powerlift

Five-year-old Luma Valones, for example is noted for performing weighted dead lifts, squats and bench presses. She has undergone two years of training, after all. "Happy Luma" is the name of her own Instagram page. Her mother Nicole Lacanglacang helps to share videos of her daughter raising pink weights over her chest. Luma's mother is a herself a powerlifter who began training Luma in her garage in 2015, beginning with a PCV pipe barbell holding 1.5-kilograms.

Now Luma is able to dead lift 24 kilograms, 8 over her total body weight. "She tells me she wants to get bigger, that she doesn't want skinny arms -- just big muscles", explains Ms. Lacanglacang. Luma pipes in to declare her intention "to be the strongest person in the universe". USA Powerlifting  has  hosted the annual youth national competition since 2015. Etta Nichols took part in the competition. "It's like the Super Bowl of powerlifting", she enthusiastically explained.

In Irvine, California, the United States Powerlifting Association has a roster of 1,400 children from the ages of 13 and over who compete at its meets. In Lake Buena Vista, Florida, the Amateur Athletic Union hosts competitors from ages five and up at powerlifting events dating back to 1994, and welcomes a steady stream of youth participants, now that weight lifting among the young and the very young has become a national phenomenon.

johnnyfit.com

Many credit the high visibility of social media for the growth in popularity among the young for powerlifting. Etta has become an unofficial ambassador for juvenile powerlifters, posting her gym adventures on her Instagram page. It is heady stuff, to become a minor celebrity among the cognoscenti of powerlifting; to make a name for oneself while a child, doing what committed adults are invested in.

The 2018 USA Powerlifting Nations competition, points out Priscilla Ribic, executive director and chair of the women's committee, became a showcase for female talent when it was overwhelmingly represented by 75 percent women powerlifters. Those involved in the industry believe in the health benefits for young participants. Their theories of the benefits to accrue to young children in powerlifting, however, are not necessarily shared by health professionals.

Despite which, parents with  young children who powerlift insist they take care to ensure their children are safe in the gym. Etta aspires to take herself to the Amateur Athletic Union's annual Powerlifting World Championship next September. She enjoys her status as a noted powerlifter and wants to continue to be recognized as a symbol other young people will want to copy, inspired by her own success.

crossfitgarage.com

Strength training, not weightlifting

Don't confuse strength training with weightlifting, bodybuilding or powerlifting. These activities are largely driven by competition, with participants vying to lift heavier weights or build bigger muscles than those of other athletes. This can put too much strain on young muscles, tendons and areas of cartilage that haven't yet turned to bone (growth plates) — especially when proper technique is sacrificed in favor of lifting larger amounts of weight.
For kids, light resistance and controlled movements are best — with a special emphasis on proper technique and safety. Your child can do many strength training exercises with his or her own body weight or inexpensive resistance tubing. Free weights and machine weights are other options.

Correcting Lifestyle Choices to Optimize Health

"When we started our research in the early 1990s in this area [physical activity and cancer], there was quite a lot of skepticism in the oncology community about how exercise could even be used with cancer patients. The general feeling was these people are already very tired and we can't ask them to exercise during their treatment or post-treatment."
"Now we've gotten to the point where groups like the American Cancer Society and Canadian Cancer Society ... are actually starting to come up with guidelines, kind of like exercise prescriptions."
Dr. Christine Friedenreich, cancer epidemiologist, Alberta Health Services

Various mechanisms have been proposed to explain the relationship between obesity and increased risk of cancer (National Cancer Institute (NCI), 2015):

• Fat cells produce hormones which can increase cancer risk, e.g., the production of estrogen which increases the risk of breast and endometrial cancer.
• Obese individuals have increased levels of insulin and insulin-like growth factor which may promote carcinogenesis.
• Obese individuals often have chronic, subacute inflammation which has been associated with greater cancer risk.
• Fat cells produce hormones that may stimulate or inhibit cancer cell growth.

Evidence is also growing regarding the role of obesity in cancer recurrence and cancer-related mortality. Obesity is a known risk factor for the development of other comorbid illnesses which are prevalent in cancer survivors, such as diabetes and heart disease.                              National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, U.S.A.

"We have an obesogenic society. And by that I mean we have ready access to cheap  high-calorie food and we have a culture that is based around eating [those foods]."
"The link between smoking and cancer was a 12-fold elevation ... so strong nobody can deny it. With obesity and cancer it's a weaker link."
"Obesity is a contributing factor rather than the major causal factor for breast cancer and for all the obesity-associated cancers."
"Smoking is the major causal factor for lung cancer ... and the other smoking-related cancers."
"The factors that have led to obesity increasing at the rate that it has in both of our countries [Canada and the United States], are really kind of woven into the societal fabric."
Dr. Pamela Goodwin, head, Mount Sinai Hospital breast cancer program

The U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that obesity rates had plateaued among young people in 2014 and 2015 in comparison to a sampling undertaken in 2007-08. According to the survey's figures, 18.5 percent of Americans between the ages of two to 18 were obese, a number identical to those reported in the earlier study. The percentage of obese adults, unfortunately had risen on the other hand, to more than six percentile points from 33.7 percent in the 2007-08 study.

Researchers involved in the Breast Cancer Weight Loss study meant to track 3,100 patients in both the U.S. and Canada over a decade, although acknowledging parallels between smoking and cancer, and obesity and cancer, hold out little hope that the kind of public reaction on learning the direct link between tobacco and cancer will ever mirror the public's response to learning the close-enough link established between obesity and cancer. Pointing out there could be no question about the former's links, while doubts will linger about the latter's.

Statistics Canada Graph

Dr. Friedenreich focuses her research on the effects that physical activity has on cancer. Since 400 studies have been conducted on that very topic, to conclude that exercise is effective in reducing risks for many forms of cancer, her confidence in her original theory is unshakeable and her commitment to promulgating the findings is absolute. She spent 27 years on making exercise and cancer her specialty concern, a pioneer in the field.

She points out that trial following trial served to unmistakably prove the benefits to cancer patients of exercising. Patients, she emphasized, felt better with the results of how they felt after exercising during chemotherapy and allied treatments, but what was even more convincing of the helpfulness of coupling cancer treatments with exercise, was that patients had improved outcomes, linking the two for their effectiveness.

The guidelines she refers to that both cancer societies in both countries are working toward finalizing set out to define matters such as exercise intensity and treatment intervals for different cancer types and their symptoms. The ultimate goal is to find ways  to reverse or prevent weight-caused cancer. A critical approach and aspiration given the wide global grip of the obesity epidemic.