Quick Science News - drunk worms, deprived fish, sex after stroke and criminal genes
Image from: wormworks.org
Drunk starving worms are living twice as long as sober starving worms but I assume they're slurring their speech. Researchers from UCLA were experimenting with cholesterol in Caenorhabditis elegans, under 'stress' (starvation) conditions. They were using ethanol as a solvent when they discovered that the cholesterol did nothing for the worms but the ethanol was extending their lives from 15 days to 20-40 days. When they increased the level of ethanol given to the worms it had detrimental effects such as death. Now before you go hitting the martinis for breakfast (breakfast of champions), the ethanol the worms received was very very diluted - like a tablespoon of ethanol in a bathtub of water diluted.
University of California - Los Angeles
And there go the fish. Researchers from James Cook University have shown that increased CO2 concentrations in sea water affect fishes central nervous system, causing them to lose their sense of hearing, smell and the ability to move left and right, which obviously makes it vulnerable to attack and only able to swim forward and backwards (?) Higher environmental CO2 levels effect the fish's GABA-A receptors which become over excited and you do not want an over excited receptor. They believe fish and other sea life are particular vulnerable because water has much lower CO2 concentrations compared to air making it difficult for the GABA-A receptors to cope with the rapid increase of CO2 concentration in the ocean.
http://www.coralcoe.org.au/news_stories/braindamage.html
The journal Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association has reported that "sexual activity is safe for most heart, stroke patients" - i'll note that one down for hopefully not my future reference.
American Heart Association
And out goes culpability - criminologist Dr Barnes claims that genes factor more greatly in criminal behaviour than environment and social factors. The analysis of 400 adolescents revealed that for "life course offenders" genes are the dominating motivator for their criminal behaviour. The article does not identify what genes cause this criminality or even how but they suggest that there are hundreds of genes that can effect criminal behaviour and the more one has the more likely they are to commit a crime.
http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2012/1/24-15201_Criminologists-Research-Shows-Genes-Influence-Crim_article-wide.html
