Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . The number 4 evokes dread among many Chinese and Japanese people. The reason: In the Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese tongues, the words for "four" and "death" are pronounced almost identically.
An analysis of U.S. mortality statistics over a 25-year period now raises the provocative possibility that this fear of 4 can literally scare cardiac patients to death. Chinese and Japanese deaths from heart disease rise sharply on the fourth day of each month, a pattern that doesn't occur among whites, according to a study in the Dec. 22, 2001 British Medical Journal.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
A particularly high fourth-day peak in cardiac fatalities characterized Chinese and Japanese in California, where large populations of those groups with many elderly members may reinforce traditional superstitions, contends a team led by sociologist David P. Phillips of the University of California, San Diego.
Mortality data can't establish the causes of the recurring fourth-day peaks in Chinese and Japanese cardiac deaths, Phillips acknowledges. "Presently, the only explanation consistent with the findings is that psychological stress linked to the number 4 elicits additional heart-related deaths among the Chinese and Japanese," he says.
Phillips and his colleagues examined daily U.S. mortality data for nearly 210,000 Chinese and Japanese and about 47 million whites from 1973 to 1998.
The scientists focused on days of the Western calendar rather than the traditional lunar calendar of Asian cultures.
First, the team calculated the average daily mortality rate in the first week of each month, when mortality for all groups is typically slightly higher than at other times. From this measure, the investigators predicted the overall mortality rate for each day of that week.
Across the country, Chinese and Japanese suffered 13 percent more cardiac deaths than expected on the fourth day of the month. This figure rose to a 27 percent excess for the large Chinese and Japanese populations of California.
Whites didn't show this effect. Also, no fourth-day mortality spikes occurred for any other disease among the Chinese and Japanese.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Further analysis indirectly supported a role for psychological stress in the fourth-day effect, Phillips says. The excess of heart-disease deaths on the fourth day was far greater if a Chinese or Japanese person was hospitalized than if a person was living in the community. This undermines several alternative explanations for the finding, including relatives' misreporting the day of death and people on the fourth day changing their diet, increasing alcohol use, refusing to take medication, or overexerting themselves.
Age, sex, and marital status also played no apparent role in the fourth-day cardiac mortality spike for Chinese and Japanese people, Phillips adds.
No increase in death rate for any disease occurred on the 13th day of the month for whites. Although regarded as an unlucky number, 13 has no linguistic link to death in the English language, the San Diego researcher says.
It's hard to interpret the new report, remarks psychiatrist Jiang Wei of Duke University Medical School in Durham, N.C. "If this statistical effect is real, we still don't know the biological mechanism for it," she says.
Nonetheless, dread of the number 4 has concrete consequences in Japan and China, according to sociologist Shen Zhao of China's Shandong University. For instance, in both countries, it's not unusual to find hospitals that don't list a fourth floor or number rooms with a 4.
Traditional beliefs, such as fear of the number 4, were discouraged during Communist China's Cultural Revolution but are now making a comeback, Shen says.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
eye 7.eye.009
Italian researchers may have found a drug to treat amblyopia, or lazy eye. A study published in April in Science [subscription required] has demonstrated that Prozac, or fluoxetine, has one clear beneficial effect on the disorder, at least in rats: It can promote plasticity in the vision-processing part of the brain, a phenomenon formerly observed only in early development.
In children with amblyopia, one eye does not receive enough visual input, which causes the other eye to take over most of the visual processing in the brain. If the input problem is not corrected early in childhood, when the brain is still malleable, it can lead to permanently defective vision or blindness in one eye.
In a two-part study of adult rats treated with fluoxetine at levels comparable to those of people treated for depression, the scientists both induced amblyopia and cured it. First they sealed one eye, essentially instigating a case of untreatable lazy eye in an adult animal. In a second stage, they sealed the good eye of adult rats that had amblyopia. Over the four-week period of treatment with fluoxetine, the rats recovered full vision and behaved as normally sighted animals do. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
The mechanism of the rats’ recovery from amblyopia is uncertain, but the researchers believe that fluoxetine opens pathways to genes that regulate plasticity, allowing modification of neuronal circuitry in the adult animal’s brain. Changing the brain circuitry improves or restores vision. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Whether the same effect could be attained in the much more complex nervous systems of adult humans is unknown, says José Fernando Maya Vetencourt, the lead author of the study and a researcher in neurobiology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. “We’re working with adult amblyopic patients to evaluate the possibility,” he says, “but it will take us a few years before we can draw any conclusion.” Maya Vetencourt adds that the findings may also shed light on the treatment effects of antidepressants and on the pathophysiology of mood disorders.
In children with amblyopia, one eye does not receive enough visual input, which causes the other eye to take over most of the visual processing in the brain. If the input problem is not corrected early in childhood, when the brain is still malleable, it can lead to permanently defective vision or blindness in one eye.
In a two-part study of adult rats treated with fluoxetine at levels comparable to those of people treated for depression, the scientists both induced amblyopia and cured it. First they sealed one eye, essentially instigating a case of untreatable lazy eye in an adult animal. In a second stage, they sealed the good eye of adult rats that had amblyopia. Over the four-week period of treatment with fluoxetine, the rats recovered full vision and behaved as normally sighted animals do. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
The mechanism of the rats’ recovery from amblyopia is uncertain, but the researchers believe that fluoxetine opens pathways to genes that regulate plasticity, allowing modification of neuronal circuitry in the adult animal’s brain. Changing the brain circuitry improves or restores vision. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Whether the same effect could be attained in the much more complex nervous systems of adult humans is unknown, says José Fernando Maya Vetencourt, the lead author of the study and a researcher in neurobiology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. “We’re working with adult amblyopic patients to evaluate the possibility,” he says, “but it will take us a few years before we can draw any conclusion.” Maya Vetencourt adds that the findings may also shed light on the treatment effects of antidepressants and on the pathophysiology of mood disorders.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
fertility 55.fer.000200 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Shortly after the U.S. Civil War, a research expedition encountered a group of Confederate expatriates living in Brazil. The refugees had quickly taken to growing sugarcane on plots of earth that were darker and more fertile than the surrounding soil, Cornell University's Charles Hartt noted in the 1870s. http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com
The same dark earth, terra preta in Portuguese, is now attracting renewed scientific attention for its high productivity, mysterious past, and capacity to store carbon. Researchers on Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis presented evidence that new production of the fertile soil could aid agriculture and limit global greenhouse-gas emissions.
Prehistoric farmers created dark earth, perhaps intentionally, when they worked charcoal and nutrient-rich debris into Amazonian soils, which are naturally poor at holding nutrients. The amendments produced "better nutrient retention and soil fertility," says soil scientist Johannes Lehmann of Cornell. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com
Charcoal forms when organic matter smolders, or burns at low temperatures and with limited oxygen. Nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium readily adhere to charcoal, and the combination creates a good habitat for microorganisms. The soil microbes transform the materials into dark earth, says geographer William I. Woods of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
http://louis5j5sheehan5.blogspot.com
If some of today's Amazonian farmers were to use smoldering fires to produce dark earth rather than clear fields with common slash-and-burn methods, they "would not only dramatically improve soil and increase crop production but also could provide a long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide," says Lehmann. http://louis5j5sheehan5.blogspot.com
Slash-and-burn land clearing releases about 97 percent of the carbon that's in vegetation. Smoldering the same fuel to form charcoal releases only about 50 percent of the original carbon, Lehmann previously reported. The rest of that carbon remains in dark earth for centuries. http://louis5j5sheehan.blogspot.com
However, dark earth requires extra nutrients, such as those in compost. International agreements on greenhouse gases don't provide financial incentives for farmers to make the effort to create dark earth, Woods says. http://louis4j4sheehan4.blogspot.com
Nevertheless, ongoing field experiments in Brazil suggest that the fertility associated with terra preta could provide its own incentive, reports Beáta Madari of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation in Rio de Janeiro.
http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com
Brazil contains a wide range of dark earths with varying compositions. The scientists found differences between the soils used for ancient backyard gardens, which received more nutrients, and soils from distant fields. http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com
Farmers of the time "certainly would have immediately learned about the properties of that soil, however [it] formed," says anthropologist Michael J. Heckenberger of the University of Florida in Gainesville. But the knowledge about how to make dark earth disappeared after contact with Europeans decimated the indigenous population.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The same dark earth, terra preta in Portuguese, is now attracting renewed scientific attention for its high productivity, mysterious past, and capacity to store carbon. Researchers on Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis presented evidence that new production of the fertile soil could aid agriculture and limit global greenhouse-gas emissions.
Prehistoric farmers created dark earth, perhaps intentionally, when they worked charcoal and nutrient-rich debris into Amazonian soils, which are naturally poor at holding nutrients. The amendments produced "better nutrient retention and soil fertility," says soil scientist Johannes Lehmann of Cornell. http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com
Charcoal forms when organic matter smolders, or burns at low temperatures and with limited oxygen. Nutrients such as phosphorus and potassium readily adhere to charcoal, and the combination creates a good habitat for microorganisms. The soil microbes transform the materials into dark earth, says geographer William I. Woods of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
http://louis5j5sheehan5.blogspot.com
If some of today's Amazonian farmers were to use smoldering fires to produce dark earth rather than clear fields with common slash-and-burn methods, they "would not only dramatically improve soil and increase crop production but also could provide a long-term sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide," says Lehmann. http://louis5j5sheehan5.blogspot.com
Slash-and-burn land clearing releases about 97 percent of the carbon that's in vegetation. Smoldering the same fuel to form charcoal releases only about 50 percent of the original carbon, Lehmann previously reported. The rest of that carbon remains in dark earth for centuries. http://louis5j5sheehan.blogspot.com
However, dark earth requires extra nutrients, such as those in compost. International agreements on greenhouse gases don't provide financial incentives for farmers to make the effort to create dark earth, Woods says. http://louis4j4sheehan4.blogspot.com
Nevertheless, ongoing field experiments in Brazil suggest that the fertility associated with terra preta could provide its own incentive, reports Beáta Madari of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation in Rio de Janeiro.
http://louis2j2sheehan.blogspot.com
Brazil contains a wide range of dark earths with varying compositions. The scientists found differences between the soils used for ancient backyard gardens, which received more nutrients, and soils from distant fields. http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com
Farmers of the time "certainly would have immediately learned about the properties of that soil, however [it] formed," says anthropologist Michael J. Heckenberger of the University of Florida in Gainesville. But the knowledge about how to make dark earth disappeared after contact with Europeans decimated the indigenous population.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
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