Uh-Oh. Animals Are Getting Fat Too

A new research study shows that America’s obesity problem is not limited to humans.  Rather, our animals are getting fatter too.  Cats and dogs, research animals including primates and mice, and wild urban rats are all undergoing an increase in obesity.

         This new finding goes along with the puzzling nature of the human obesity epidemic.  Lots of magazine articles blame American obesity on super-sized MacDonald’s meals and sitting all day in front of computers and electronic games. 

         But lots of studies show that the obesity problem is not that simple.  Other factors seem to be at work.  Now, the fact that animals living near or with humans are also suffering from rising obesity points to some common environmental factor.  The study I am citing controlled animal diets and exercise, so the animals are not getting fat from being snack-happy couch potatoes

         In my last post (Dec. 28, 2010), I wrote about the possibility that the plastic ingredient BPA, an endocrine disruptor, could be causing declines in sperm counts.  This same BPA has been shown to have a significant connection with obesity, as have other pollutants.  Certain cold viruses have also been shown to be connected with obesity.

         So it seems quite possible that our environment is working right along with our lifestyles to make us and our animals fat.  When this mystery gets solved, I wonder if we’ll also understand the environmental factors that bring about autism, breast cancer, and other modern scourges.

         With all that still remains to be discovered, 2011 should be a year full of wonder.  Happy New Year!



BPA and Low Sperm Count

There’s more and more news about hazards of Bisphenol A or BPA.  Some of the most recent comes from Kaiser-Permanente, indicating that even small amounts of BPA exposure can lower sperm counts and sperm motility in men. 

         To me this qualifies as a wonder, though a negative one.  BPA apparently mimics certain hormones and disrupts processes controlled by those hormones.   We don’t yet know exactly how this comes about, but eventually researchers will figure at least some of it out.  And it will illustrate one or more wonders about the way our cells function when they are free of poisons.

         I looked up the video in this post so that I can show it to you here, and so that I can refer back to it next time.  In my next post, I’ll write about an obesity mystery that might be related to BPA also. 

Winter Dawn

It’s harder to take morning power walks along the Chicago lakefront in winter, but it’s worth the trip.  If it’s been snowing a lot, I spend a morning or two on the treadmill at the World Gym, to give the Park District time to plow the bicycle path where I walk.  If it’s below 10^oF, I use the treadmill to protect myself from frostbite.

         After it’s stopped snowing for a day or two, or after the temperature has risen into the teens, I pull on my long johns and bundle up in a parka.  Off I go at about 6:00 AM, thrilled to be outdoors and heading for the lakefront park after missing it for a few days.

         The winter temperatures give a crystal clarity to the air, and the white snow glows with reflected light.  The bare trees are black and graceful against the snow.  The stage is set for the sky show.

         Over the past couple of weeks, as I’ve arrived at the park, Venus has greeted me from high up in the eastern sky, a shining white crescent.  When the moon is also in the east, the two make a brilliant pair, showing no sign of the vast distance that separates them.  Both are wonderful to see in the deep blue sky—even though, were we there, the moon would actually be dim, gray, and cratered—even though, were we there, Venus would be a hellish, roasting hot planet, so hot, water is all vapor and the planet is dark as night under such perpetual cloud cover.

         So I walk along, breathing in the cold, fresh air, glorying in the shining sight of Venus and the Moon above the black trees and white snow.  Beyond the snow, a ribbon of dark, shiny lake ripples at the horizon.  And here comes the Sun, evident so far only in a growing pink-orange-rust glow over the water.  Sometimes there are purple clouds between the rosy pre-dawn and the water, sometimes it’s just the pre-dawn rosiness. 

         Taking in this glorious scene of land, lake, sky, universe, I offer up a prayer of gratitude.



How Our Brains Recognize Faces

I read an article by Carl Zimmer in the latest issue of Discover Magazine about research into how the brain recognizes faces.  Just like all investigations into the human brain and vision, this one turned up completely unpredicted results.

         Human brains contain a kind of average face template, and for each real face we see, we register how it differs from average.  Is this face longer than average, wider than average?  Is this nose narrower or wider or shorter or more bent than average?  Are these ears bigger or more or less protruding?  And so forth.

         When we recognize a friend or a relative, we are remembering the idiosyncrasies of their features compared to the visual face templates in our brains.  Zimmer points out that this is why caricatures work so well.  The caricaturist exaggerates any facial idiosyncracies (as well as body idiosyncrasies) and we instantly recognize George W Bush or Barack Obama.

         We couldn’t have predicted how our brains make social recognition possible.  This part of the human visual system evolved over eons, starting with primate ancestors.  We primates are social species, and our survival requires us, in part, to recognize one another as friends, relatives, or strangers.  Our visual face recognition equipment evolved using reptilian brain parts that were already in place doing other jobs, or similar jobs for different purposes.

         In the last couple of centuries, research uncovered a number of surprises about vision and the human brain.  The visual part of the brain is in the back, even though our eyes are in front.  We see and recognize objects using very little visual detail; but only certain details, such as edges, are useful.  Our brains are determined to make sense of what we see, and will tell us fairy stories rather than just say they don’t recognize what our eyes have delivered.

         Getting back to faces, many years ago I read an article about facial beauty.  The author of that article had discovered that humans judge faces as beautiful if they are symmetric, the more symmetric the more beautiful.  In other words, according to the Discover article, we seem to think the average face template in our brains is the most beautiful of all. 

         So instead of the eye of the beholder, perhaps beauty is in the brain of the beholder.



Bobby McFerrin, Music, and the Brain, Part 2

My last post showed a video of Bobby McFerrin at the 2009 World Science Festival.  McFerrin demonstrated how his audience intuitively understood the pentatonic scale: CDEGA, a scale that leaves out dissonances.  Carl Orff, the composer of Carmina Burana, used this scale to construct musical instruments for children so they could play music together that always sounded pleasant.  Such harmonic group music encouraged them to continue playing because the experience was so enjoyable.

         The question at the World Science Festival was this:  Is music inherent in humans, and therefore genetic?  Or is music learned?  According to Bobby McFerrin, his little experiment works everywhere in the world where he has tried it.  It seems as if humans all over have an instinctive sense of the pentatonic scale.

         On the other hand, said others on the panel with McFerrin, hearing develops by week eighteen in the human embryo.  Could it be that embryos “learn” about music while still in the womb?  Do they hear the music their mothers are listening to and become acclimated to scales in this way?

         I believe it must be a little of both.  All humans, everywhere, make music.  Humans invented music.  That makes music seem inherent.  Some linguists even believe that music came before speech, and led to it.

         But if we develop in utero with some kind of genetic predisposition toward music, that would probably make us more receptive to the music we hear before and just after we are born.  With no examples, my grandchild spontaneously began dancing to music as soon as he could walk.  He turned in circles in time to the beat, and frequently asked for music to be played.

         I think music is one of the top ten wonders of the universe.  And I also think that playing music together in duets, trios, quartets, etc., in bands and orchestras, is one of the most civilized activities humans engage in.  So if we are genetically programmed for music, we are genetically programmed for civilized behavior.  How wonderful it would be if we would lean more and more away from strife and more and more toward our musical genetic gifts.