The Study of 'Unequal Parental Investment' in Offspring

"I thought -- and I still think - it's very plausible and intuitive [birth order moulding personality traits]."
"Birth order research is one hundred years old [its roots in Freudian psychoanalytic theory]. We are getting closer and closer to the truth."
"But I wouldn't say yet that we have fully understood the true picture."
Ralph Hertwig, psychologist, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin

"None of these behavioural measures showed any credible relationship between being a later-born and taking more risks."
"Does birth order shape people’s propensity to take risks? For decades, personality psychologists have believed that birth order influences personality, but recent evidence has accumulated to indicate that this is not the case. The effect of birth order on risk taking is less clear. We searched for evidence in survey, experimental, and real-world data, analyzing self-reports, incentivized risky decisions, and consequential life choices. The findings point unanimously in the same direction: We found no birth-order effects on risk taking in adulthood."
Study, Decision Science Laboratory, University of the Balearic Islands, Spain

Thory that first-borns have  higher IQs questioned     iStock

"Our results indicate that birth order does not influence the propensity to take risks in adults."
"There seems to be a growing consensus that birth order does not influence personality in a way that can be measured in adulthood."
"[The Basel-Berlin Risk Study -- used as an assessment tool in the study -- is one of the most exhaustive attempts to measure risk preference."
Tomas Lejarraga, director, Decision Science Laboratory

"This paper is very clear and it convincingly shows that there are no birth order effects on risk taking."
"Some of the birth order effects that we observe in everyday life are not birth order effects, but actually are age effects."
"It is not surprising that, when you look at differences within families, that first-borns are more conscientious than later-borns. [Take age away and the effect fades]."
Stefan Schmukle, psychologist, University of Leipzig, Germany

The effects of age on daily life is attributed to the birth order.   Credit:Paul Rovere

Conventional wisdom has it, thanks to psychologist Frank Sulloway's influential book on birth order published two decades ago and widely hailed as a breakthrough, that first-born children, lavished with attention by first-time parents grow into intellectual, responsible and conformist adults while their younger siblings must work more diligently for attention from their parents and in so doing take greater risks, in the process ultimately becoming creative rebels.

 As Mr. Sulloway had it in his account of the nuclear family, in his book Born to Rebel, by commanding parents' attention and resources, first-borns leave little for later-borns who must then struggle to find their own niche; attitudes and behaviours that crystallize into adult personas. However convincing the theory sounded and was embraced at the time as solidly reliable, new studies reverse that trend altogether with newer research based on larger data sets and trustworthy statistical methods finding no relationship to birth order and personality.

Dr. Hertwig, one of the co-authors of the new, debunking study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, expected that evidence would be uncovered marking later-borns as daredevils, with this study of risky behaviours. And was surprised when that turned out not to be the case at all. For this study, biographical data of explorers and revolutionaries, along with a survey of 11,000 German households and the Basel-Berlin Risk Study were used to arrive at their conclusion.

The household survey failed to find any relationship between self-reports of riskiness and birth order, and nor did examining birth orders of close to two hundred people who had made a "risky life decision" to be revolutionaries or explorers (mountaineer Edmund Hillary, guerrilla fighter Che Guevara and socialist activist Rosa Luxembourg, for example) validate the theory.

In 2015 a study by Stefan Schmukle at University of Leipzig assessed birth order in about 20,000 people in the U.S., Germany and Great Britain finding that birth order was not a reliable measure of five broad personality traits: the "Big Five" -- openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. And nor did a following study published two years later by Schmukle's team find any effect of birth order.

Using a sample "larger than all of the previous samples from the past hundred years put together", Rodica Damian, a social psychologist at the University of Houston, studied over 370,000 high school students to conclude in 2015 that birth order fails to influence the Big Five. Frank Sulloway, a psychologist at the University of California at Berkley and the originator of the theory, made a distinction between "technical" and "radical" revolutionaries, to uphold his original theory.

He pointed to first-borns having a "slight advantage in IQ" -- as example, Isaac Newton's and Albert Einstein's physics work -- as opposed to later-born radical revolutionaries such as evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin, or astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, whose unorthodox ideas upset social norms.

Availability and Consequences : Alcohol and Hospitalizations

"Alcohol deregulation appears to have resulted in increased alcohol-related harms in Ontario." "Deregulation [with the relaxation of alcohol sales and extension to stores and longer hours of sales] has likely had negative impacts far beyond the reported emergency department visits."
"[The situation of expanded alcohol sales outside the more highly-regulated Liquor Control Board of Ontario should be studied as a [natural experiment that can be used to better understand the relationship between alcohol availability and harms."
"[Placing limits on the number of alcohol outlets and their weekly hours of operation] should be part of any alcohol strategy."
New study on Deregulation of Alcohol and Hospital Admissions

In Ottawa alone, alcohol led to 6,100 emergency department visits between 2013 and 2015, 1,270 hospitalizations during the same time and 140 deaths (between 2007 and 2011), according to Ottawa Public Health. Ashley Fraser / The Ottawa Citizen

The convention of alcohol sales in the province of Ontario has long baffled and irritated provincial residents who look abroad envying the availability of wines and beers in supermarkets just across the border in the United States. In Ontario's neighbouring province of Quebec, liquor is sold in depanneurs (convenience stores) and they will even deliver to the customer's home. In Ontario, spirits have been sold in provincially-regulated stores; Brewers Retail for beer and LCBO-controlled outlets for wines and hard liquors.

Ontarians have chafed at the indignity of it all, at the lock on their freedom to shop anywhere for a product that is popularly consumed and recognized as a part of any food-and-drink culture. Where a dour Presbyterian outlook on liquor consumption means that bars and restaurants must make application to the LCBO for a license to enable them to serve alcohol. Bars wishing to qualify had to make a measure of foods available; restaurants knew that without a liquor license their eating establishment would fail to draw customers.

Finally, appeals to the government to relax what has been seen as Draconian and outdated laws on
'protecting the public' by making it difficult to buy a product heavily taxed to provide government with a reliable revenue stream was mismatched with the current, more relaxed culture, less driven by an atmosphere of general alcohol-consumption disapproval far removed from the prohibition years that ended in dismal failure. The move to deregulation was initiated in 2015 when a Liberal government expanded beer and wine sales across the province to grocery stores.

The current Conservative government is set to expand that initiative and loosen restrictions to an even greater degree. According to the authors of the study published in the journal Addiction, that further expansion will result in greater harms to the public, attributable to more alcohol availability. Dr. Daniel Myran, a public health resident at University of Ottawa, lead author of the study expressed the opinion that further expansion of alcohol sales in the province would "lead to more emergency department visits due to alcohol".

According to the province's finance minister, it is time for the government "to treat people like responsible adults". An further relaxation of alcohol-sales-restrictions is therefore in order where beer and wine sales are to be expanded to corner stores, big box outlets and a larger choice of grocery stores across the province. Dr. Myran's research undertook the study of a link between alcohol access and emergency department visits attributable to alcohol use, by comparing hospital emergency department visits before deregulation and after.

Geographic areas where grocery stores were licensed to sell alcohol were brought into the study equation, as compared with areas where no such sales took place in grocery stores. Alcohol-related rates of visits to hospital emergency departments the study revealed, rose by 17.9 percent during the period of the study (2012 to 2017), a number in excess of all other emergency visit for various other reasons. The regions with grocery stores selling alcohol post-2015, showed in addition, a six percent greater increase for hospital emergency visits in comparison with those areas absent alcohol sold in grocery stores.

While previous research had associated increased alcohol access with health harms associated with alcohol use, this study is the first to focus on Ontario alone.Over 23 million Canadians over the age of 15 reported the use of alcohol in 2017. The consumption of alcohol has been estimated as the cause of 6.6 percent of deaths in men and 2.2 per cent in women. Of the total number of Canadians using alcohol, 21 percent reported having consumed enough that they would be at risk of chronic and immediate alcohol-related harm.

Alcohol has led to 6,100 emergency department visits between 2013 an 2015 in Ottawa alone, during the same period. According to Ottawa Public Health, 140 deaths that occurred between 2007 and 2011 were attributable entirely to alcohol consumption. The takeaway to which is the indelible impression that many people indeed are not prepared to behave in a manner recognized as "responsible".

Beer on shelves. ERIC THOMAS / AFP/Getty Images

Focus on Investigating Cannabidiol [CBD]

"There's a lot of hype about everything about CBD [Cannabidiol]."
"There is certainly data that it has a variety of anti-inflammatory effects, but whether that translates into improving human health is unknown."
Dr. Orrin Devinsky, director, Langone Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, New York University

"Let's do the research."
"It's crazy that this substance is being consumed by everybody, yet we still don't know the mechanism of action."
"[Expectations around the substance are unrealistic]. People are making it out to be a nirvana kind of drug, and that's a problem."
"One compound cannot cure everything."
Dr. Yasmin Hurd, director, Addiction Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City

"There actually really is very, very little scientific evidence to support its use as a treatment for anxiety at this point."
Dr. Michael Van Ameringen, director, anxiety research center, Hamilton, Ontario

CBD, the non-intoxicating component of the cannabis plant, has been relentlessly promoted to ease pain, anxiety, insomnia and depression; in short a magic remedy for whatever ails society, psychologically and physically. There are many forms and types of application containing CBD from salves and sprays to tinctures and oils marketed as balms for eczema, pimples and hot flashes, as aphrodisiacs, and as treatments for chronic, serious, life-disabling diseases such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

People with Crohn's disease improved with the use of cannabis, according to one Israeli trial. Despite which a randomized controlled trial of CBD found for patients with treatment-resistant Crohn's there was no benefit, despite investigators concluding the dose used might have been too modest to be effective. Pointing out that figuring the correct therapeutic dose assigned in tests is a challenge, reflecting the early stage and paucity of CBD research.

Source: M. Bonn-Miller et al/JAMA 2017

Results obtained through a recent study evaluating dozens of products containing CBD available by order online found close to 70 percent of the products had either higher or lower concentrations than was indicated for the ingredient on the label. Some, in fact, contained THC, the hallucinogenic component of marijuana. It all comes down to one simple, hard truth: scientists know little about CBD; scant research has targeted the compound.

Some children with severe epilepsy, like this boy from Texas, have found remarkable relief from seizures with a drug called Epidiolex. The medication is the first CBD-based drug to get FDA approval.

Only one drug containing CBD -- Epidiolex -- has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, after clinical trials found it reduced seizures in children with rare forms of epilepsy. While skeptical about the wide range of claims made for CBD, Dr. Hurd of Mount Sinai agreed that the compound seems to reduce heroin cravings in recovering addicts and that it has an appreciable safety profile: "hands-down safer generally than THC".

It can however, she also pointed out, cause adverse side effects such as sleepiness and diarrhea. In the Epidiolex trials, patients were susceptible to more infections and rashes and experienced depressed appetite, sleep problems and elevated liver enzymes. CBD is one of more than 100 biologically active components called cannabinoids derived from the cannabis plant; the second most abundant cannabinoid after THC. The possibility also exists that CBD may interact negatively with other medications.

At the present time, studies to evaluate whether CBD will alleviate anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, help with tobacco cessation or even enhance cancer therapies, are all underway. There are suggestions through animal studies that anti-inflammatory effects may help in the management of chronic pain or in the treatment of arthritis of inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's. Even as a potential treatment for autism.

In response to many of his patients enquiring of Dr. Van Ameringen about the use of CBD he was spurred to review the medical literature, finding little there to advance the use of the compound, on available conclusions. Last year European scientists, reporting on patients with schizophrenia given CBD to complement their regular antipsychotic medications, found that fewer patients hallucinated and had racing thoughts. Other studies have failed to validate that conclusion.

This shop in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., offers CBD-infused pizzas and smoothies, a growing trend as companies tout the oil’s ability to treat anxiety, depression, pain and more.

Penetrating Suspicion, Delivering Vaccines

"There is today a health zone called Vuhovi."
"We are having huge troubles to access it." 
"We need to really be able to join hands and work together on this [inoculating vulnerable isolated villagers in Democratic Republic of Congo]."
Dr. William Perea, incident manager, WHO

"I heard someone shouting, 'bring the matches'."
"And then I felt the heat of the fire from my bed."
Kavu Mate, Ebola patient, Butembo, Democratic Republic of Congo

"They hit me with wooden sticks and they broke the car."
Gilene Barati, epidemiologist, WHO

This health clinic, specialised in treating Ebola victims, was destroyed during an attack by armed militants. The photo on the right shows a burned out vehicle belonging to French medical charity MSF. (Photos by our Observers Bienvenu and Djiress Bakoli)

Ebola has proven resilient, adaptable and opportunistic, feeding on the ignorance of isolated tribes and a climate of suspicion from people who have suffered violent discrimination for as long as they can recall, and who are suspicious of government representatives purporting to be interested in preserving their lives. The contagious, deadly virus has broken out in what is virtually a conflict zone. Responding to the outbreak in such circumstances is doubly difficult, fraught with danger for those who enter.

An Ebola treatment centre in Butembo in the east of the DRC experienced first-hand the difficulties of tending to the needs of the medically fragile when rebels with machetes and guns ran amok in the medical centre and set fire to many of the tents. Hooked to drips, weak patients faced another deathly threat; if the virus didn't kill them the terrorists just might. Somehow it was the tents containing the pharmacy, archive room, washing station and cars that were set aflame, sparing tents with patients.

Research for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) established that 43 percent of Ebola patients had no links to other cases, adding to the difficulty of following the infection's spread, though it is well established that Ebola spreads through contact with bodily fluid and the virus is alive and hugely contagious on the bodies of the dead which tribal custom dictates be washed and tended before burial. MSF pulled out of Butembo following attacks on two treatment centres by Mai Mai rebels.

This photo shows part of the burned out health center in Butembo. (Photo taken on February 28 by Bienvenu Lutsumbi.)

The rebels appear particularly incensed at the presence of health workers in the area, targeting them for attack. A WHO team of epidemiologists who had travelled to a nearby village hoping to trace a patient's contacts was attacked, just another in a long string of attacks targeting Ebola centres in North Kivu province in the past month alone in a region where, since the summer the disease has been infecting the population at a steady rate.

This is a volatile region where conflict erupted and continued for over two decades, where an estimated 120 armed groups prey on the population.The spread of the disease has been significantly halted thanks to a new vaccine. "If it weren't for the vaccine, the disease could have killed thousands by now" commented Dr. Oly Hunga, minister of health for the DRC. Over 80,000 people have been inoculated in a concerted effort between the ministry and the World Health Organization.

Because some of the villages in the region represent rebel strongholds they are impossible to enter. And when health teams appear in some of the villages hoping to trace patient contacts and vaccinate them, suspicion is raised to an even higher level when they're accompanied, for safety reasons, with police escorts. "For one ill person, ten cars come with the police and people in masks", observed Alexis Kasserka a skeptical villager.

One villager expressed the opinion that the government was responsible for deliberately spreading the disease; far-fetched paranoia at first listen, until the realization strikes that the people of his tribe have faced massacres over the years. "Ebola is a game bought by white people to make money from us", offers another villager, newborn baby on her lap. The struggle to convince these communities that prevention is key to battling Ebola faces many obstacles.

"Unfortunately, the safe method of burial doesn’t correspond with traditional practices and it ends up angering the many people who aren’t allowed to touch the body or take it out of its body bag." "Recently, the number of attacks has increased and grown more serious in Butembo-Katwa. There were two more attacks in February, aside from the tragedies in Vuhovi and Katwa. We hope to see the results of our efforts to raise awareness."
Dr Jacques Katshishi, supervisor, Red Cross Ebola program

Ebola crisis continues, but mistrust means some in DRC deny it’s real    Africa Times

Through the Looking Glass

"I think I knew we built something special, but I don't think I expected this [immense commercial and cultural success]."
"I almost missed it. Mirrors were something I took for granted because my entire career I worked out in front of them."
Brynn Putnam, 35, entrepreneur, former New York City Ballet dancer

"I legit use it as my full-length mirror."
"You would never in a thousand years know it was a piece of workout equipment."
New York actress Lindsey Bradley

Mirror

A whopping $1 million in monthly sales is a substantial return on an investment that seemed a logical advance in workout technology, and even its inventor was taken by surprise at its runaway success. There's nothing particularly new or different in viewing oneself critically (or admiringly as the case may be) through one of those ubiquitous mirrors in any recreational gym; everyone does it for reasons of their own, usually to be certain that they're making the right moves, using the body as it was meant to be used in pursuit of lithe, fit and athletic.

This mirror, however, is galaxies ahead of the world of mirrors so familiar to anyone who has ever used one. It is the most interactive mirror-mechanism yet produced, boasting 70 live fitness classes weekly that include boxing, dance, cardio, high intensity interval training and yoga. And that's for starters, there's more to come with a medium that allows the user to face the instructor while viewing their entire body alongside a smaller image of the instructor's body.

It doesn't act as a touch-screen; everyone knows how touchy mirrors can be about hosting greasy fingerprints; instead an app controls the device, which became available this past September, retailing at $1,495. Oh, and a $39 monthly subscription fee with four class levels. Its inventor, Brynn Putnam, had earlier opened her own boutique gym, Refine Method eight years ago in New York. She raised $38 million to fund her new enterprise, the production of 3.6-centimeter-thick mirrors.

So popular have they become by celebrity endorsements that they are being installed by luxury hotels in their suites. She had been an instructor ten years earlier at barre method gyms where substituting moves such as lunges were looked unfavourably upon and which led her to create her own gym Refine, after disagreeing with sport scientists and professional athletes' trainers about moves she favoured and they didn't.

When she opened at first in a 45-square-meter ground-floor New York space she designed a cable tower of weighted sailing pulleys and tracks readily disassembled and remounted, for strength exercises. In 2016, she surveyed Refine members about new class times, trainers and custom-produced equipment. Mirrors she had put in place turned out to be her clients' favourite installation for instant feedback. That served as her motivation to focus on mirrors.

Kailee Combs, the vice-president of fitness at Mirror, works out with some of the demos on one of the Mirror products in their showroom in New York. Photograph: Vincent Tullo/The New York Times

In the planning stages for the very new future, is personal training to start at $40 each session. And children's needs for sports participation preparation have not been forgotten; that too in the offing. And then, treadmill and spin workouts, among the ambitious plans by the Mirror company, to have the device regarded by users as their third screen after their phone and computer. It can also be used for organizing photos, and to chat.

Even at the present time, users are able shop through the Mirror for fitness gear and instructor favourites. Leaving no innovative initiative unexplored, and buoying the bottom line at the very same time. That's entrepreneurial skill at its apex!

Mirror

Repeat: Velvet Fluff

"[The focus on language studies is often on culture] but our work shows that language is also a biological phenomenon -- you can't fully separate culture and biology."
"If you are raised on softer foods, you don't have the same kind of wear and tear on your bite that your ancestors had, so you keep an overbite." 
“The landscape of sounds that we have is fundamentally affected by the biology of our speech apparatus. It's not just cultural evolution."
"Certain sounds like these ‘f’ sounds are recent, and we can say with fairly good confidence that 20,000 or 100,000 years ago, these sounds just simply didn’t exist."
Balthasar Bickel, linguist, University of Zurich

"I hope our study will trigger a wider discussion on the fact that at least some aspects of language and speech—and I insist, some—need to be treated as we treat other complex human behaviors: laying between biology and culture."
"The probabilities [for making labiodentals accidentally] are relatively low, but given sufficient numbers of trials—and by this, we mean that every utterance you make is a single trial—over generations, that leads to the statistical signal we see. But it's not a deterministic process, right?"
Damián Blasi, researcher, Comparative Linguistics Department, University of Zürich (Switzerland) and research affiliate, Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Still from video: Inside Science

A new study out of the University of Zurich in Switzerland on language and sounds humans make in communication, recently published in the journal Science adds another vital element to the science and history of linguistics and speech, pointing out that the human jaw and how the teeth are arranged in the jaw is as much and perhaps more a determinant of speech as is culture and popular practise over the aeons. The study points out the critical influence of the food eaten by humans on the placement of the jaw and the set of our teeth, enabling certain forms of speech.

By analyzing Stone Age against modern skulls the researchers created simulations demonstrating the manner in which variant jaw placements permit our mouths and vocal chords to produce different sounds. A database of about 2,000 languages representing over a quarter of the languages in use to the present day, was utilized in identifying which sounds were given more and which less frequent use, and where that would happen to be geographically. 

Hunter-gatherer society groups in the recent past are recognized as being far less likely to have used consonants, more familiarly used by early-era farming societies, the study discovered. "Our anatomy actually changed the types of sounds being incorporated into languages", pointed out Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel, evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Buffalo, though not herself involved in this study. 

Early human societies chewed meat; tough because it was raw, which wore on jaws and teeth. Much later societies cultivated crops and eventually cooked foods became a common part of the human diet, requiring far less chewing, on soft food stuffs. Consequently, adult skulls dating from the Stone Age look different than more modern skulls, the older skulls' upper and lower teeth closing shut atop each other. Modern skulls reflect the fact that most people have a degree of overbite; front teeth extending slightly over bottom teeth, with closed mouth. 

Over time, humans' diet of softer food reflected on an evolutionary-resulting jaw with a different configuration and that in turn became enabling for different sounds to be produced since pronunciation was simplified. The "f" and "v" sounds are what linguists describe as "labiodental" sounds, and the modern skull with its modified jaw and upper teeth slightly overlapping bottom teeth made their pronunciation possible.

In their research, the linguists studied 52 languages from the Indo-European language group which included dialects spoken from Iceland to India, charting how the "f" and "v" sounds appeared in various languages over time. The sounds became increasingly more commonly used as societies became agricultural and softer food became accessible, with less emphasis on meat consumption, even in its cooked state. 

"New sounds get introduced into languages, and then are more widely adopted", explained Steven Moran, another linguist at the University of Zurich and co-author of the paper.

The difference between a Paleolithic edge-to-edge bite (left) and a modern overbite/overjet bite (right). (Tímea Bodogán)

Global Warming? Mebbe   Climate Change? Absolutely

"Weather, and especially extreme weather, is how most people will experience climate change."
"You don't experience the slow change in average temperature. What you experience are the changes in extreme weather that are brought about."
"So how we talk about that is really important."
Susan Joy Hassol, director, science outreach organization Climate Communication

"To the nine or ten percent of the population that are going to be dismissive of climate science no matter what, there's not much you can say to them."
"But a lot of people out there are legitimately curious [about how global warming can be real if it's cold out today]."
Marshall Shepherd, professor of atmospheric science, University of Georgia

"For a long time, Americans saw climate change as a distant threat. But as of our most recent survey, I don't feel I can say that any more."
"We're seeing a lot of movement on people understanding that climate change is already happening."
Edward Maibach, professor, George Mason University

According to a 2017 study people who experience extreme weather are likelier to support climate adaptation measures than they were before their introduction to extreme weather. The study also concluded, however, that the effect was not deep and failed to last; as time went on people's attitudes returned to where they were to begin with, the memory of exposure to extreme weather events fading with time.

Author of that 2017 study, David Konisky, associate professor at Indiana University was left wondering whether a more effective type of messaging could shift opinions. "It might be that climate has become so wrapped up in one's identity and worldview that it is not the sort of thing that's susceptible to better messaging", he mused.

In recent years some climate scientists have made a concerted effort to transform instances of severe weather events into useful teaching tools. "This is what global warming looks like", became a mantra in the summer of 2012 when widespread droughts, wildfires and extreme heat advisories distinguished the season.


On the other hand, climate change deniers as well used weather events to shape public perceptions, as they expressed their disbelief that these events were anything but normal cyclical weather systems repetitively seen evolving in other, earlier eras. Both environmentalists and scientists made often cited notes that record-breaking hot days have become more frequent occurrences than their counterpart cold days.

A new survey by Yale and George Mason universities identified 69 percent of Americans being "worried" about the issue of global warming -- representing an eight-point increase from the spring before. To explain the situation, extreme weather disasters were cited that took place in 2018; wildfires and hurricanes as well as concerted efforts of both scientists and local TV weathercasters to place the events in a climate context.

A consistent string of shifting weather begins a process of undermining doubt about global warming, according to Wanyun Shao, an assistant professor of geography at University of Alabama. Such instances help to guide people to begin to imagine a world of the future where weather conditions have altered what we have long taken for granted, according to psychologists.

"For some people, it takes more time [to be convinced of the reality of Global Warming]. But eventually people start trusting their own experiences", pointed out Professor Shao.

Bat Fungal Scourge : White Nose Syndrome

"White-nose syndrome represents one of the most consequential wildlife diseases of modern times."
"The disease has killed millions of bats and threatens several formerly abundant species with extirpation or extinction."
Research paper, mSphere

"In areas like this where it's not yet arrived, we can form a predictive model based on ecology, physiology, genetics and skin chemistry."
Jonathan Reichard, official, United States Fish and Wildlife Service

"This research will inform us which bats will be susceptible and which will be resistant, which will inform a conservation and intervention strategy."
Sarah. H. Olson, director, wildlife health, Wildlife Conservation Society

An Indiana State University biologist searching for signs of white-nose syndrome holds a northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis). As the disease spreads, biologists are preparing for impacts on bats in the West. ©Scott Bergeson/Indiana State University

"Disrupting them during hibernation is adding stress at a time they can least afford it."
"There's no practical way at all to slow or stop this, to get rid of it in the wild; it's already in thousands and thousands of [bat] roosts."
"It should be allowed to run its course. We're just wasting money when we try to find a cure. We should be spending our money on getting the maximum protection for the bats that have survived and helping them recover and rebuild populations."
"Using something to kill the fungus is going to kill other fungi or microorganisms in the cave that will cause other chain reactions and problems that are far greater than what we started with."
Merlin Tuttle, bat expert, Texas

A hibernating Little Brown Bat showing visible signs of the fungus. (Alan Hicks, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation photo)

There will always be some research scientists in any field, who disagree with the studies and findings of others; total consensus is difficult to obtain, a matter put to rest once one or the other camps is proven correct in a hypothesis that led them to an avenue to be explored which proves distinctly correct. That goal has yet to be reached in a conundrum which has stricken bat populations across a wide swath of North American geography with a fungal infection whose effects have been deadly to millions of bats since 2006.

Bats hibernate from September to April, lowering their heart rate and respiration for three weeks at a time. This is a diversion from how they have conventionally hibernated when hibernation is continuous and non-interrupted, conserving the fat stored in their tiny bodies to see them over the winter months until they awaken in the spring. That they waken after three weeks have elapsed and go in search of water is a result of bats infected with the fungus causes dehydration.

"During torpor they burn almost no energy. During arousal they burn a lot. Even though it's only five percent of their time, it's 95 percent of their energy. It really comes down to how often they arouse", explained Nathan Fuller, postdoctoral biologist from Texas Tech University, part of the research team of five biologists who entered an abandoned mine on a mountainside to pluck the tiny mammalian specimens from the walls in a collection meant to deliver some clues to solve the problem of dying bats.

A general, widespread effort is underway in North America for the purpose of understanding how a rapidly spreading fungal bat disease will affect bat populations in the western United States; their intention was expressed in the paper published in a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Fuzzy spots appear on the noses of these mouse-size creatures in white-nose syndrome, leading to its name.

In the last decade, agencies representing state, tribal and federal entities and nonprofit groups have been attempting to find a way to save the 47 bat species in North America, with no luck as yet. The five biologists gathering bats off the walls in the mine brought the 30 bats they collected to a trailer where an animal MRI and respirometer were present, for the intention of weighing and measuring the tiny creatures.

Scientists across the western US and Canada are capturing and studying thousands of bats to discover which are best suited to survive the deadly white nose syndrome. Photograph: Wildlife Conservation Society

Entire ecological landscapes could be altered, disrupting natural order, should the disease continue spreading and eliminating colonies of bats. First discovered in a cave outside Albany, New York in 2006, it was thought the fungus came from Eurasia, somehow introduced to North America where the pathogen has since spread to 36 U.S. states and seven Canadian provinces, wiping out entire bat colonies, totalling an estimated six million bat deaths.

The loss of these bats and the natural service they provide to the ecology in which they circulate could be monumental in its consequences, since they are pollinators and their voracious appetites make quick work of mosquitoes and other nuisance insects. The outbreak of the pathogen has ravaged the U.S. East Coast, and white-nose syndrome is spreading to the rest of the Western U.S. at a rate of roughly one state annually, meaning that in the next few years it might spread to the thousands of caves and abandoned mines of the Rockies.

A more complete biological map of bats' hibernation physiology gives hope to researchers that this could gain them a finer understanding of the process and how a strategy to defeat the effects of the fungus could be achieved. When the bats are forced to expend stored energy to take them through the winter months in a short-term survival mode brought on by white-nose syndrome, they become emaciated and die. Alternately, they might leave the cave sooner than they should in search of food, and die in the winter environment.

The research team has committed its time and energy and funding on equipment in an effort to more fully comprehend bat hibernation in the hope that once baseline data are established a solution may be found to this deadly dilemma. In the search for solutions heretofore, biologists have considered placing food in caves, feeding bats probiotics or electrolyes, or using chemical skin treatment to counter the fungus. They have tried fogging caves with antifungal agents.

And others, such as bat expert Merlin Tuttle urge patience and caution, hoping that the fungus might run its course, then possibly meet some obstacles not found in its native environment, and die off, leaving the remaining, uninfected bat groupings to repopulate.

A researcher inspects the body and wings of a bat collected for research. Photograph: Wildlife Conservation Society

Dwindling Wildlife Diversity

"It was the right move [to rescue the sole remaining caribou in a now-extinct herd]. That animal was not going to survive."
"[Mountain caribou have massive hoofs] pie plate or dinner plate, that's not an exaggeration [to function like snowshoes as they traverse mountain slopes]."
"[They are elusive animals] They don't call them the grey ghost for nothing."
"I am resolute about the return of that species [Selkirk caribou to the Lower 48]. It's too easy to say, 'Well, they're not here, let's quit'. That's not the tribe's [Kalispel Washington tribe] perspective."
Ray Entz, director of wildlife and terrestrial resources, Kalispel Tribe, Washington

"[The Selkirk population had grown to almost fifty in 2009 but since then the numbers have been] going down, down. They have no future with one, two or three animals."
"The caribou are just a more vulnerable species. They don't kick hard like a moose. They're not as skittish as a deer. They never have twins."
"So with these changes [in habitat and range], they're the ones that pay the price [easy kill for predators]."
Leo DeGroot, government wildlife biologist, British Columbia

File photo of the isolated population of mountain caribou inhabiting the Selkirk Mountains of southern B.C.Handout

The decision to capture the sole remaining Selkirk caribou once it was determined that one of three remaining last year wearing radio collars had been killed by predators and no sign had been seen or heard of the other in months, led Canadian wildlife managers to move to bring in the surviving female and place her in a protective pen to enable her survival. She was caught in a net shot from a helicopter and then sedated by biologists and transported to a maternity pen near Revelstoke, British Columbia.

Used as temporary caribou obstetric wards and nurseries where wildlife managers move pregnant females to feed them until their calves are over a month old, the pens now hold the captured Selkirk caribou and three other animals; one a calf born there and brought back when its mother was killed and two others from yet another dwindling southern mountain herd. The hope is to capture a female from a herd nearby to become familiar with the other refugees so that when they are released in one fell swoop, the new female will lead them to her habitat and safety in the wild.

The Kalispel Tribe is involved in the international move to conserve the South Selkirk herd, named so in reflection of the steep mountains where they live. Traditionally, historically, the tribe had hunted the caribou. That particular herd was considered by biologists to be "functionally extirpated", one of 15 isolated subpopulations within a broader group recognized as southern mountain caribou living in various landscapes from the northern tundra herds, all of which are shrinking, reflecting human development and altered habitat.

A female mountain caribou from the beleaguered Southern Selkirks herd feeds in a wet meadow in the southern Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia, Aug. 8, 2017

At one time, northern New England and upper portions of Great Lakes states -- Minnesota for example -- were populated by caribou, but their range narrowed and contracted northward over time. Fewer than thirty animals remained by 1983, leading to the Selkirk herd joining the endangered species list. Since 2012, there has been no sightings in the United States, according to a management plan linked to a multiagency international group studying the population which lives in inland temperate rain forests.

In the winter, the mountain caribou migrate to higher elevations to search for furry arboreal lichen that hang from old-growth trees, representing their seasonal survival food; their massive hooves enabling their grip on the snowy slopes. Their forest habitat has been fragmented over generations through the intrusion of logging operations, roads, power lines and oil exploration and mining in Canada. In place of the mature trees logged out, immature vegetation grew in, opportunistically attracting moose, deer and elk.

Numbers of caribou in B.C. are in decline — with just six remaining in the two most southerly herds. (Getty Images)

Their presence in turn attracted opportunistic predators which led to wolf culls in Canada but which did little to aid the survival of the caribou, less able to defend themselves than other species. And as they fell prey to wolves and mountain lions their numbers diminished dramatically. A caribou breeding program is foreseen for the near future in Canada but prospects of captive-bred animals released before four years have passed is remote, along with the uncertainty of whether they would restore the Selkirk herd or another herd facing a precarious existence.

The Center for Biological Diversity and several allied groups announced they plan to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for its failure in designating protected caribou habitat in northern Idaho and northeast Washington. When the agency proposed setting aside over 375,000 areas in 200, opposition from recreational snowmobilers and others resulted in the agency cutting that protected acreage down to about 30,000, and while a federal court ordered Fish and Wildlife to reconsider, no decision has been issued as yet.


A female mountain caribou from the beleaguered Southern Selkirks herd feeds in a wet meadow in the southern Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia, Aug. 8, 2017.

The Rising Tide of Meat Avoidance -- In Pets' Diets

"People who avoid eating animals tend to share their homes with animal companions, and a moral dilemma may arise when they are faced with feeding animal products to their omnivorous dogs and carnivorous cats. One option to alleviate this conflict is to feed pets a diet devoid of animal ingredients—a ‘plant-based’ or ‘vegan’ diet. The number of pet owners who avoid animal products, either in their own or in their pets’ diet, is not currently known. The objective of this study was to estimate the number of meat-avoiding pet owners, identify concerns regarding conventional animal- and plant-based pet food, and estimate the number of pets fed a plant-based diet.
Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph survey, PLOS ONE

"[Fewer than two percent of dogs and cats in the study sample were fed a strictly plant-based diet, however] that's still a large number of animals that are potentially affected."
"Nutrition for pets really does shadow what's going on in human nutrition. People have been hearing about how vegan diets are linked to lowered risks of cancer and other health benefits in humans." "There is also growing concern about the environmental impact of animal agriculture. So, while only a small proportion of pet owners are currently feeding plant-based diets to their pets, it is safe to say that interest in the diets is likely to grow."
Sarah Dodd, veterinarian, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph

(Rarnie McCudden from Pexels)

The study out of Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph's, the first to look into the issue of "meat avoidance" for companion pets concludes that 35 percent of pet owners showed an interest in changing their pets' diets from one heavy on animal products to a vegan or plant-based diet, mostly because they themselves are practising meat-avoidance. Close to 20 percent of Canadians are alert to a new nutrition bias against animal products in their diet and have taken to minimizing or eliminating meat from their dinner tables.

According to a recent survey, 1.3 million Canadians identify as vegetarians, with 466,000 Canadians dedicating themselves to veganism, excluding dairy and eggs along with meat. When they restrict their own diets to non-meat essentials a moral conflict ensues considering their pets' diets, heavy on products for which meat is a major ingredient. Dogs are naturally omnivorous, while cats are carnivores, their diets heavily dependent on meat protein for optimum health.

Cat owners in Britain have been warned that charges could be laid under animal welfare laws should they impose a vegan diet on their pets. As with humans, theoretically dogs could survive on a diet based on plant matter as long as essential nutrients normally derived from meat are present. There is, however, an absence of studies evaluating the nutritional quality of pet foods kibbled or canned, based on plant matter to the exclusion of meat entirely. Cats would fail to thrive outside a meat-based diet.

A survey with the title "Pet Feeding Practices" was circulated online to the attention of dog and cat breeders, which the PLOS ONE journal-published study was based upon. There were 3,673 responses, mostly from pet owners in Canada, the U.S. and U.K. with dietary information provided for 2,940 dogs and 1,542 cats with the majority of pet owners (84 percent) indicating they eat an omnivorous diet, six percent identified as vegan, six percent as vegetarian and the remainder pescetarian (including fish, excluding meat).

Many dogs (10 percent) and cats (3 percent) were intermittently fed vegetarian or plant-based foods while 97 percent of dogs and 99 percent of cats were given food containing meat. An interest was expressed by 35 percent of pet owners in feeding their pets a diet based on plants, though not yet having made the transition. Half that number felt "further stipulations needed to be met" before finally committing to the change in diet -- specifically nutritional sufficiency evidence.

Of vegans who responded, 27 percent reported feeding pets an exclusive plant-based diet, with double the number of dogs as cats fed exclusively plant-based diets. No evidence has been published through research on possible health benefits accruing with avoidance of meat in dogs or cats, the researchers concluded.

As well, vitamin deficiencies could arise as a result of eating only plant-based foods. Respondents indicated (half the omnivores surveyed and over half vegetarians) they felt it to be immoral for pets to be fed a diet their natural needs mitigate against.

The problem, as Ms. Dodd -- who specializes in veterinary nutrition -- sees it, is that  a rising trend exists where pet owners have committed to consciously limiting meat in their companion pets' diets.

Adaptability Favours Survival

"An observer measures his/her distance to a resting bird with a rangefinder and then paddles slowly in the bird's direction, taking distance readings every few strokes. The final distance reading -- just before the loon dives to avoid us -- is our measure of tameness."
"In fact, some of our marked birds ... find our approach so innocuous that they simply veer slowly out of our patch, instead of diving."
"[If our conclusion holds up] tame loons will produce a large proportion of all offspring in the northern Wisconsin population, and tameness should increase in frequency in coming decades to the point where skittish loons are hard to find at all."
"This vast behavioural shift might go unnoticed by most observers, since there will still be loons on the lakes. But to an ecologist, it is exciting to think that we might be on the brink of learning the precise mechanism by which a population of an important animal can become tame."
Walter Piper, biologist, Chapman University, California

Loon Pat Wellenbach / AP

According to a survey of loons present on two hundred lakes in Wisconsin, studied by Dr. Piper whose focus is loon behaviour of northern Wisconsin, (absorbing his interest since 1993), loons have adapted to an environment that includes human presence by becoming more comfortable with that presence over time and exposure. His conclusion however, is not that the presence of humans make the loons more comfortable, but that because humans are present, the change has occurred.

While his team of students is out on the lakes banding and observing the birds, they also measure and record each bird's level of 'tameness'. The distance range they find, measures from less than two metres, all the way to over 50 metres before the loons become nervous at the human proximity and dive. The loons that Dr. Piper's group studies have led them to the discovery that 'tame' loons are more seemingly adapted to living around humans and to then reproduce near human habitation on their lakes.

There appears to be, according to Dr. Piper, "a strongly and statistically significant relationship" whereby tame loons breed tame chicks. That could be as simple as patterning and as complex as inheriting a subconscious acceptance of the presence of humans passed through generations, but not mentioned as a possibility, since Dr. Piper states the reasons are unknown to him. 

The study which he has detailed in his blog is not completed, but evidence suggests tame birds prosper on lakes with humans living nearby. The 'skittish' loons tend to migrate to other lakes a longer distance from towns and cottages which turn out to be smaller in size, less likely to represent an ideal food source for the birds since they're less productive.

Whereas the larger lakes circled by cottages tend to be more productive in their food sources for the diving birds. The end result is that the skittish loons produce undernourished , smaller chicks while the tame loons' offspring tend to be larger and healthier -- tilting toward loons tolerant of human presence.

When a loon paddles underwater, the cnemial crest functions as a lever. Illustration by Denise Takahashi

Over the years that Dr. Piper has studied loons, he has noted that solitary loons, seeking territorial advantage to be had by moving in to an area well stocked with feeding material -- usurping it from the birds whose territory it is -- looks for the presence of healthy chicks, realizing that successful parents occupy good breeding grounds.

"The effect is dramatic; the intrusion rate (rate of attempts to grasp territory) increases by 70 percent following a year with chicks. Raising a chick is like painting a great big target on their backs. Those little brown fuzzballs look cute in the moment, but their presence portends many battles with floaters the following year. No wonder parents take steps to hide their chicks, when they can", explained Dr. Piper.

Leading one to the conclusion that raiding others' territorial advantage is not only the purview of human sociopaths but appears to slop over into the animal world of other species as well.

Never Too Fit Nor Too Healthy

"Our findings provide evidence that pushup capacity could be an easy, no-cost method to help assess cardiovascular disease risk in almost any setting. Surprisingly, pushup capacity was more strongly associated with cardiovascular disease risk than the results of submaximal treadmill tests."
"Using push-ups could be a no-cost and simple method to assess one’s functional capacity and predict future cardiovascular event risk. For clinicians this is really important since a lot of tests vary in their results and are very expensive and time consuming. This can be done within a minute."
"With firefighters pictured on calendars as muscular and very fit, we tend to think of them as different from everyone else, but this group is pretty much the same as the rest of the population. Half of them were overweight or obese." 
Justin Yang, occupational medicine resident, Harvard University

"It's one snapshot assessment, but the fact that you can do less than 10 push-ups doesn't necessarily mean you're at high risk for heart disease. There could be other factors at work.:
"And the fact that you can do more than 40 doesn't mean you're at low risk."
Dr. Stefanos N. Kales, co-author, Harvard study

Master Sgt. Jesse Lawhorn, 49th Maintenance Squadron, completes 289 push-ups during the annual Push up-a-thon held at the Domenici Fitness and Sports Center here Dec. 11. Sergeant Lawhorn won the category for having the most push-ups for males over the age of 30. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Veronica Stamps)

"You have to be pretty fit to do that many push-ups."
"You would probably have to do a good amount of exercise on a regular basis to get to the level of 40 or more."
Kerry Stewart, professor of medicine, director, clinical and research exercise physiology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 

"We have long known that physical inactivity constitutes a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and is associated with worse [health] outcomes."
"Conversely, physical activity decreases cardiovascular risk."
Dennis Bruemmer, associate professor of medicine, cardiologist, Heart and Vascular Institute, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pennsylvania

Men, able to produce 40 pushups at a time, are recognized through a new study appearing in JAMA Network Open as less likely to experience a heart attack or any cardiovascular problem in following years, than those men who manage to complete ten or fewer pushups in a single exercise session.
Although the medical community has long recognized the utility of exercise in keeping a body healthy, what is meaningful about this study and its conclusions is that pushup capability might present as a simple method of assessing heart health.

It is universally acknowledged that cardiovascular disease represents the most common cause of global death events. Surviving heart attacks and strokes leads invariably to disability, a lapse in work capability and a considerable diminution of quality of life. The issue here is to recognize the presence or impending signals of cardiovascular disease onset and while there are medical tests to diagnose heart health such as treadmill exercise-stress testing or heart scans, they tend to be complicated and are expensive to prescribe.

These are not tests that are predictive in nature, picking up alerts that heart health is being compromised; what they mostly do is recognize heart disease once it has developed. This very fact spurred Harvard University researchers and those at Indiana University along with other related institutions to study the health and fitness of a group of over 1,500 Indiana firefighters who were instructed to report annually to a single clinic in the state for a medical check, including standard assessments of weight, cholesterol, blood sugar and allied health data.

Part of the annual report included a submaximal treadmill stress test to estimate their current endurance capacity. It was that last measurement of endurance capacity that piqued the interest of researchers, building on past studies that have linked high aerobic fitness with a reduced risk for heart disease onset. The purpose was for the researchers to compare stress test results to cardiovascular problems in the future for a sense of how prescient the treadmill testing might turn out. It then came to the notice of the researchers that over 1,100 of the firefighters had as well completed pushup tests as part of their yearly exams.

Taking advantage of the pushup data available, the researchers included that information as a second set of data, to categorize the men in groups reflecting the number of pushups they were able to complete. Then they discovered that pushup capacity proved to be a more statistically accurate predictor of future heart problems than the treadmill tests. This was a strictly observational study, showing that a greater number of pushups are linked with fewer heart problems, but not that arm strength directly improves heart health or whether ability to perform more pushups would drop the risk for heart problems over time.

However, according to Dr. Stefanos Kales, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and senior author of the new study, "muscular strength is one component of good fitness". A further takeaway from the proficiency in performing pushups is that those who demonstrated that ability are assumed to have an interest in consuming nutritionally healthful food, to indulge in regular exercise and to maintain a normal weight, all of which contribute to healthier hearts.

RossHelen / Getty Images