Tue, Oct 21 2008
MARC FABER EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU
Brilliant guy. Love his plain-spokeness. Click the pic to see the video.
Tue, Oct 21 2008
THIS MOMMY CAN DEFINITLY DEAL
Why eating males pays off, for spiders
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Female spiders who eat would-be suitors produce more babies, and those babies are stronger and bigger, than spiders who stick to more mundane fare, researchers reported on Tuesday.
And the merciless mother spiders waited until they had mated with another -- ensuring they would hatch spiderlings -- before consuming their new beaux, the researchers found.
They said their study is the first "natural" experiment to prove correct the old folklore about spiders, and said it also shows why such behavior might be beneficial.
"Now we know that, at least in one species, sexual cannibalism benefiting females occurs in nature," Dr. Jordi Moya-Larano of the Estacion Experimental de Zonas Aridas in Spain, who led the study, said in a statement.
The Mediterranean tarantulas in the study did not eat their mates, but instead ate males before courtship -- and usually after the females had already mated with another male, the researchers found.
Some other studies have suggested that males may sacrifice themselves for the sake of their offspring, but this study showed that, at least in this species of spider, the males are purely unlucky victims and only the babies benefit.
Some studies had also suggested that studying spiders in the lab produced skewed results, perhaps because the creatures were stressed or perhaps because they could not obtain all their needed prey or nutrients.
So the researchers set up a field experiment in which they watched the spiders, sometimes snatching the males from the jaws of females before they were devoured.
"At natural rates of encounter with males, approximately a third of L. tarantula females cannibalized the male," they wrote in their report, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.
"The rate of sexual cannibalism increased with male availability, and females were more likely to kill and consume an approaching male if they had previously mated with another male," they added.
"We show that females benefit from feeding on a male by breeding earlier, producing 30 percent more offspring per egg sac, and producing progeny of higher body condition. Offspring of sexually cannibalistic females dispersed earlier and were larger later in the season than spiderlings of non-cannibalistic females."
One theory had also held that females who ate males were simply more aggressive and perhaps better hunters -- but when the males were saved just in time, those females did not produce superior broods, suggesting that the male meals were an important source of nutrition.
The study can be found at: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003484Tue, Oct 21 2008
STUPID QUESTIONS
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."
- attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic" (1776)Tue, Oct 21 2008
MOMMY CAN'T DEAL
"According to the World Health Organization, suicide rates have increased by 60 percent in the last 45 years."
Yowza. This is serious stuff. Not good, not good at all. Often, middle-aged women are the sole emotional and physical support for their families. Wonder how much the alcoholism and meds abuse rates have skyrocketed amongst this group? This signals a serious breakdown in the fabric of our already tattered society. If Mom can't keep it together anymore, we are well and truly screwed...
Middle-aged women drive rise in U.S. suicides: study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. suicide rates appear to be on the rise, driven mostly by middle-aged white women, researchers reported on Tuesday.
They found a disturbing increase in suicides between 1999 and 2005 and said the pattern had changed in an unmistakable way -- although the reasons behind the change are not clear.
The overall suicide rate rose 0.7 percent during this time, but the rate for white men aged 40 to 64 rose 2.7 percent and for middle-aged women 3.9 percent, the team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found.
"The biggest increase that we have seen between 1999 and 2005 was the increase in poisoning suicide in women -- that went up by 57 percent," said Susan Baker, a professor in injury prevention with a special expertise in suicide.
Writing in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Baker, Guoqing Hu and colleagues said they analyzed publicly available death certificate data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The results underscore a change in the epidemiology of suicide, with middle-aged whites emerging as a new high-risk group," Baker said in a statement.
"Historically, suicide-prevention programs have focused on groups considered to be at highest risk -- teens and young adults of both genders as well as elderly white men. This research tells us we need to refocus our resources to develop prevention programs for men and women in their middle years."
Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States and Baker said the changes are substantial.
"Definitely these are not just little blips," she said in a telephone interview. "We are looking at a big population change."
She hopes other researchers will study the reasons behind the shifts. "I certainly think we need research to look at the information that we have on people who have committed suicide," she said.
"Are these people living alone, with no major responsibility or others to take care of, or are they people overwhelmed with all of the jobs and responsibilities they have? We need to find out more about the conditions under which these people are living."
The middle-aged women and men used various methods to kill themselves -- poisons, prescription drugs, hanging or suffocation, and firearms, Baker said.
While firearms remain the most common method, the rate of gun suicides decreased while suicide by hanging or suffocation increased by 6.3 percent among men, and 2.3 percent among women.
In September researchers confirmed an 18 percent spike in youth suicides in the United States in 2004 persisted into 2005 after more than a decade of decreases.
And international research published in January found that the young, single, female, poorly educated and mentally ill are all at higher risk of suicide.
According to the World Health Organization, suicide rates have increased by 60 percent in the last 45 years. Depression is the leading cause of suicide.All news articles and images provided under the Fair Use Notice.