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Facebook News Feed Leads to Echo Chamber, Filter Bubble Effects

May 8, 2015 By Joe Hennessey Leave a Comment

A recent market analysis performed by the social network revealed that Facebook news feed leads to echo chamber, filter bubble effects.

The results of the study published on early Friday morning have strengthened the belief that Facebook’s news feed structure is isolating people.

This occurs because Facebook’s users are exposed only to those news or ideas that generally comply with their preferences. Thus, it becomes all the more difficult for Facebook users to get access to other viewpoints, especially those that do not reflect their own beliefs.

The phenomenon was described by behavioral scientists as an “echo chamber” or “filter bubble” because people hear and read only the subjects they are interested in, without getting other contradictory opinions.

The research was performed by comparing the social network behavior of Republican and Democratic Facebook users.

The analysis has revealed that Republicans and Democrats, respectively, are more exposed to information pertaining to their favorite political party because Facebook posts links on their news feed based on their past Internet preferences and behaviors.

The social network has, nevertheless, defended itself by saying that this online behavior is not entirely influenced by them. Facebook users are exposed to contradictory opinions, as well, but they prefer to read only those stories that reflect their opinions. According to Facebook, it is the users’ fault and they should be more open-minded about contradictory stories, if they want to get a comprehensive understanding of a certain matter.

The study was performed with the help of a system, intentionally created by Facebook to carry out the current research.

The system identified all the news articles that were shared at least 100 times during the last months of 2014. The query managed to identify 226,000 news articles showing users’ preferences in terms of politics, world affairs and economy.

Researchers outside Facebook criticized the study because, they say, it has too many limitations.

First of all, the analysis has focused primarily on political viewpoints and perspectives, taking into account only liberals and conservatives’ behavior. These two categories are devoted to their political parties and they rarely seek to get other contradictory opinions.

Second of all, the percentage of liberal and conservative Facebook users does not go higher than 1%. This number is too small, therefore, it cannot stand as a proof that most Facebook users live in an “echo chamber”, researchers say.

Facebook should try to study the “echo chamber” effect on other categories of users to determine the exact extent to which the social network is isolating people in a “filter bubble”.

Moreover, further studies should take a deeper look at the way in which the identified news articles have, indeed, changed users’ political behaviors and beliefs.
Image Source: Media Salon

Chances of Getting Bitten By Mosquito May Be Genetic

April 22, 2015 By Matthew Slotkin Leave a Comment

New study shows that if mosquitoes are drawn to the scent of a particular person, they are are more to find her twin’s scent appealing as well. On the other side, if they are repelled by someone’s scent, they’re likely to find her twin repulsive, too.

Scientists analyzed 37 sets of twins who were entered their hands in a Y-shaped glass tube. The 20 mosquitoes from the tube had 30 seconds to assess the scents emitted by the hand. Then a small door was opened, which allowed the mosquitoes to fly toward the hands they found appealing and away from the hands they were repelled by.

After running the experiment 40 times with each set of twins, they discovered that the mosquito preferences were about twice as large for identical twins, compared to the levels for fraternal twins. That allowed the scientists to demonstrate that 62% to 83% of a person’s degree of mosquito appeal is determined by DNA, according to a research published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

Other studies have discovered that genes are about 80% liable for a person’s height and 50% to 80% for their IQ.

Researchers have believed for some time that people are bitten by mosquitoes an unfortunate genetic inheritance.

They suspected that biology had a role in either attracting or scattering mosquitoes. For example, women who are pregnant are much more appealing than women who aren’t. The scientists also found out that people who are infected with malaria parasite are more attractive to the insects at the time when the infection can be spread.

Previous research have demonstrated that mosquitoes are drawn to people on the basis of their odor. Bacteria that is present on the skin is responsible for producing body odor, but skin cells also play a role, which might be controlled by genes.

So the scientists recruited 19 pairs of fraternal twins and 18 pairs of identical twins. All of them were women and post-menopausal.

The team also made use of dozens of female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, a species that can spread dengue fever. The mosquitoes were almost a week old, and in their lives until the experiment all their food was a glucose solution.

In some tests, the researchers analyzed the odor of one twin’s hand while comparing it to clean air. They also tested twin-versus-twin, while in other tests, both ends of the Y-shaped tube had clean air pumped through them.

Image Source: Mosquito

Walking Improves Health Of Prostate Cancer Survivors

April 17, 2015 By John Birks Leave a Comment

As is the case for most tumors, the treatment for prostate cancer can take its toll on a patient’s health. However, according to new study, walking three hours every week can prove to be very good for the health.

Examining which types of exercises were most helpful to prostate cancer survivors, specialists at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine managed to find the relationship between simple walking and improved health results.

The information was gathered from a massive research which looked at the health and behavior of 51,529 men from the health care industry. The study was conducted by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and relied on data on respondents’ exercise routines, smoking habits, diets, doctor visits and more.

As part of the research, participants filled out health-related quality of life questionnaires, in which they gave details on sexual function issues, urinary and bowel problems, depression, fatigue, body weight and erectile dysfunction. Respondents also categorized cardio-related activities, like running, jogging, swimming, cycling, and playing sports. At last, the men offered data on the amount of time they spent walking each week, and also filled out if their walking pace was easy, average, brisk or very brisk.

For the latest research, scientists at Northwestern obtained the data on men who had move forward after a non-advanced stage of prostate cancer.

When checking for more high-intensity exercise and disruptive health factors, the doctors discovered these men were more likely to obtain a higher quality of life if they walked at a normal pace for at least three hours every week.

Walking was only shown to be beneficial to hormone-related symptoms like depression, fatigue and body weight. Walking did not appear to have any influence on urinary, bowel, or sexual functioning. The study was published recently in the Journal of Cancer Survivorship.

“This study shows that you don’t have to engage in high-impact, vigorous activities to improve your quality of life after a prostate cancer diagnosis. Since many prostate cancer survivors might find vigorous activities hard to stick with, the good news is that simply focusing on walking more may be enough to make them feel better,” lead study author Siobhan Phillips, a kinesiologist at Northwestern Medicine, said in a news statement.

Image Source: Khaleej Times

Research Finds Chemistry Bond Between Dogs and Humans

April 17, 2015 By John Birks Leave a Comment

A new study carried out by Japanese researchers suggests that long loving gazes and other expressions of affection are a strong bond between human and dogs. When dogs gaze into human eyes, their bodies are flooded with oxytocin, the hormone of love, mutual trust and nurture, similar to the bond that forms between a parent and child.

In the new research, Japanese scientists observed the interactions of 30 dog owners and their pets, and discovered that the more that the owners and their dogs looked in each others’ eyes, the more intense was the burst of oxytocin both in human and for dogs. The researchers the more we humans respond to a dog’s gaze and the more substantial the resulting influx of oxytocin.

When the same scientists measured the spontaneous interactions between wolves and the professionals who had raised, played with them and fed them, they didn’t observe the gaze, while the surge in oxytocin was not present.

In a separate study, the scientists administered dogs a dose of oxytocin before a half-hour session of interaction between the pet and the owner. Among female dogs the raise in oxytocin increased the number of times the dog looked in the eyes of its owner, which icaused an increase in oxytocin released in the dog owner’s blood. The same result was not observed in male dogs.

The new study was published Thursday in Science magazine and was carried out by researchers at the University of Tokyo Health Sciences and by the Azabu University, Jichi Medical University, all in Japan. The study’s canine participants included two mutts, five golden retrievers, three miniature schnauzers, three Labrador retrievers, three standard poodles, two toy poodles, two Shiba inus, two miniature dachshunds, and one boxer, one border collie, one German shepherd, one flat-coated retriever, one miniature bull terrier,, one Jack Russell terrier, one papillon and a Shetland sheepdog.

“Humans may feel affection for their companion dogs similar to that felt toward human family members”, is one of the findings of the study.

But these statements and their implications could help resolve an evolutionary mystery: How did two very different species from the evolutionary tree come to stop mutual aggression, and to live together in a deep relationship which often imitates the relationship between mother and child?

The study’s findings suggest that humans and dogs grow to care and protect each other through a positive loop that is facilitated by oxytocin. The neurochemical is what ignites the bond between child and mother.

The authors of the new research suggest that over long periods of co-evolution, dogs entered deeply into human society by mimicking the behavior that draw humans together.

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Eating Out Regularly Linked To High Blood Pressure

April 14, 2015 By John Birks Leave a Comment

There may be a connection between high blood pressure and meals eaten away from home, a recent study suggests.

Scientists from the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore have discovered that eating out has been linked with a higher saturated fat intake, but also with a higher caloric intake and higher salt intake. These patterns are usually associated with high blood pressure.

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is one of the leading risk factors for death caused by cardiovascular disease and illnesses worldwide. Previous research have discovered that young adults with a condition called pre-hypertension, a slightly elevated blood pressure, could be moving into hypertension very quickly if they eat away from home regularly.

For the research, scientists observed 501 university-going young adults from Singapore, with ages from 18 to 40 years old. Information on blood pressure, lifestyle and body mass index, but also data about meals eaten away from home and physical activities, were also collected. After analyzing the results, the researchers established a link between eating out and high blood pressure.

With the help of statistical analysis, the scientists discovered that pre-hypertension was present in 27.4 percent of the total focus group, and that 38 percent consumed more than 12 meals away from home every week. After performing a gender breakdown, the team revealed that pre-hypertension was affecting 49 percent of men, a much larger amount than in women, which stood at just 9 percent. Those who suffered from pre-hypertension or hypertension were eating more meals away from home per week, but also had a higher mean body mass index, while showing lower physical activity levels. Most of them were also current smokers.

The team of researchers from Singapore found that even eating one extra meal out increased the odds of pre-hypertension by around 6 percent.

“While there have been studies conducted in the United States and Japan to find behaviors associated with hypertension, very few have surveyed a Southeast Asian population. Our research plugs that gap and highlights lifestyle factors associated with pre-hypertension and hypertension that are potentially modifiable, and would be applicable to young adults globally, especially those of Asian descent,” said Tazeen Jafar, who authored the study, in a statement.

The report was published in the American Journal of Hypertension. Its detailed findings can be very helpful in the quest to change behavior trough clinical and policy recommendations.

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Scientists Find Out How Ancient ”Terror Bird” Stalked Its Prey

April 14, 2015 By Melissa Gansler Leave a Comment

Researchers have found an almost complete skeleton of a species of 10-foot-tall carnivorous bird with hooked beak. The so called terror bird used to roam trough South America in search of prey around 3.5 million years ago, but now scientists are discovering surprising things about their anatomy and especially their hearing.

The results of the study were published Thursday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Researchers found the excellently preserved fossil back in 2010 on a beach in Mar del Plata, a city on the Atlantic coast of Argentina. To their surprise, the fossil is the most intact skeleton of a terror bird ever discovered, with approximately 90 percent of its bones preserved.

Federico Degrange, the study’s lead researcher, named the new species Llallawavis scagliai. The assistant researcher of vertebrate paleontology at the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Tierra and the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina offered the fossil this interesting name from “Llallawa” a term that means “magnificent” in Quechua, a language used by the people from the central Andes, and “avis,” which is “bird” in Latin. The name also honors the prestigious Argentine naturalist Galileo Juan Scaglia (1915-1989).

The researchers that the bird’s skull was more tough than those of other birds. A skull like that could have aided the terror bird to slam prey with its huge and powerful beak.

The specimen is the first known terror bird with a complete roof of the mouth and complete trachea. The fossil even include the complicate bones of the bird’s ears, brain box and skull, eye sockets, which offers scientists an unparalleled glimpse at the flightless creature sensory capabilities.

An analysis of the bird’s inner ear network aims towards the fact that the terror bird perceived low-frequency sounds,which is a huge advantage for predators. It hunted by listening for the low noises made by their prey’s footsteps as it touched the ground, the scientists added. The new discovery also suggest that the terror bird also used low-frequency noises for communication.

“That actually tells us quite a bit about what the animals do, simply because low-frequency sounds tend to propagate across the environment with little change in volume,” explained Lawrence Witmer, a professor of anatomy at Ohio University.

Among other animals that could hear low-frequency sounds were dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus rex. In present times, crocodiles, rhinos and elephants are also capable of doing this.

Image Source: International Business Times

Psychological Stress Can Increase Diabetes Risk

April 14, 2015 By Matthew Slotkin Leave a Comment

According to a study recently published in the journal Diabetologia, serious life events in childhood, such as illness or death in the family, a new child or adult in the family, divorce or separation, and constant domestic conflicts and fights in the family can triple the risk of developing Type-1 diabetes (T1D)

Even if the causes of T1D are unknown, a new research has found that both genetic and environmental factors are involved in the development of the disease. This form of diabetes is usually contacted after the body’s own immune system has attacked and destroyed most beta cells in the pancreas, the organ that is responsible with the production of insulin.

“This study concludes that the experience of a serious life event, which reasonably indicates psychological stress, during the first 14 years of life may be a risk factor for developing Type-1 diabetes,” was mentioned in the statement which accompanied the research carried out by specialists from Linkoping University in Sweden.

The study performed on 10,495 participants. At least one of four data gatherings were performed when the children were aged 2 to 14 years. From the entire sample, 58 were later diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The researchers obtained the age at diagnosis from the national register SweDiabKids.

The scientists measured family psychological stress using forms filled out by parents assessing important life events, parental worries, parenting stress and parent’s social support.

The team noted that this increase in risk for type 1 diabetes was in close relationship with serious life events in early years of life was as important as birth weight, enterovirus infection or infant nutrition factors.

Genetic predisposition remains the most important of all factors after comparing each one individually. Type 1 diabetes risk increased 12-fold, within the study, for those with a first-degree family member whom has already suffered from type 1 diabetes, which was approximately four times higher than the boost associated with serious life events.

The researchers added that “psychological stress should be treated as a potential risk factor, and should be examined further in future epidemiological studies, for instance in relation to genetic risk.”

The team identified the beta cell stress hypothesis. It suggests that the child’s experience of an important life event may contribute to beta cell stress which causes both increased insulin resistance and increased insulin demands. This is due to the physiological stress response.

Image Source: Highlands Health System

Shorter People Face Greater Risk of Heart Disease

April 9, 2015 By Ryan Harris Leave a Comment

A team of international researchers announced that shorter stature increases the risk of heart disease. The scientists gathered genetic data from almost 200,000 men and women worldwide and, after compiling the results, estimated that each extra 2.5 inches of height offers a 13.5 percent reduction in heart disease risk, throughout the entire range of adult heights.

Sir Nilesh Samani, a professor of cardiology at the University of Leicester in England and lead author of the new study, said that someone who is 5-foot-6 has a 30 percent smaller chance of developing cardiac diseases than a person who is 5 feet tall.

The study was published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine and researchers hope it could lead to other discoveries about the relationships between our native characteristics and heart disease.

The scientists were trying to prove the opposite, that height doesn’t have an impact on heart disease risk. The first person who suggested the two could be linked was Dr. Paul Dudley White, a cardiologist who was President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s physician, in 1951.

He conducted a research at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he observed that 97 men who had suffered heart attacks before age 40 were 2 inches shorter on average than other 146 healthy men.

It is not only height that increases the risk of heart disease, but also your ethnic background and other risk factors, such as obesity, smoking, diabetes or cholesterol.

Samani and his fellow specialists followed a different path than previous researchers, studying genetic variations that resulted in short stature and linking them to greater risk of heart disease.

Previous studies had classified 180 genetic variations that control height. Samani and his colleagues examined the genetic profiles of more than 200,000 people in order to find out if those variants also affected heart disease risk. The team found only small links: a slightly higher level of LDL, a form of cholesterol that increases heart disease risk, and to slightly higher levels of triglycerides, which are blood fats that are also constitute a risk.

Not everyone is very impressed by the new study. Dr. Kari Stefansson, chief executive of deCODE Genetics, explained the increase in heart disease risk was real but so small, that it could not be very meaningful.

Studies of huge DNA databases, like the new research, are offering scientists the answers to questions that seemed unanswerable.

Image Source: The Independent

Scientists Try To Solve Mistery Behind The Moon’s Origin

April 9, 2015 By Tara Hamilton Leave a Comment

The Moon could have been formed after a huge collision between Earth and an object that was very similar in composition to our planet.

This new theory could help elucidate why Earth and Moon have so much in common in rock composition, more than experts would expect from a giant impact. But this is only one study regarding the origin of the Moon that were published recently in the prestigious journal Nature.

Two other research papers speak about recently unknown differences in lunar rocks. Researchers believe they are crucial in drawing the picture of the Moon’s history.

Scientists from Israel and France have managed to simulate the turmoil of the early Solar System. The study quantifies the number and versions of collisions that might have happened during that time.

In its beginnings, the Earth would have been the scene of an entire string of heavy collisions with other planets in the forming stage. According to the experts, the last of these was a cataclysmic impact with a planetary rock just ten times lighter than Earth. The theory suggests that the resulting debris eventually merged and the Moon was thus formed.

Previous studies believed that the planet that hit Earth was a different type of space object, but new data denies these theories.

“They are almost identical. This is one of the major challenges for this really beautiful giant impact hypothesis,” said Dr Perets, from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Dr Perets and his colleagues discovered in their simulations that the planet that hit earth might, in fact, have been made of almost identical materials to those already present on Earth, that is why only subtle differences are observed in lunar material.

The new studies have found an interesting explanation for what happened subsequently to both the Earth and the Moon. Researchers have proposed that both the Earth and Moon gathered a huge amount of extra matter, during a subsequent period when the two were bombarded by large numbers of meteorites.

Even if the Moon and Earth had originally similar building blocks, our planet had a much stronger gravity and deprived the satellite from a balance of ingredients during that period.

The two other new studies of lunar rocks, one from Germany and the other from the US, discovered evidence for this shift, after looking at samples from the Apollo missions with new high tech equipment.

They found that a small but important difference when compared lunar rocks to Earth rocks: an altered ratio in the metal’s different isotopes.

Image Source: Feel Grafix

Fish Oil Makes Chemotherapy Less Effective

April 3, 2015 By John Birks Leave a Comment

According to a new research, fish oil supplements may reduce the effectiveness of cancer chemotherapy, while a new survey found that many people with cancer were taking these pills.

Researchers tested six fish oil supplements and discovered they contained a specific fatty acid which has reduced the efficiency of chemotherapy in mice, according to a study published in JAMA Oncology.

Dr. Emile Voest, the study’s lead author from the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam said people who are undergoing chemotherapy should stop taking fish oil supplements and debate any supplement with their doctors.

Voegst and his colleagues estimate omega-3 fatty acids are utilized by about a fifth of Americans with cancer. Fish oil, which is often sold in capsules for about $10 for 100 pills, is the most common source.

The scientists had previously discovered that even a very small quantity of two fatty acids diminished the effectiveness of chemotherapy in mice with cancer. The fatty acids could enable cancer cells to regenerate themselves at a faster pace after chemotherapy.

The experts analyzed 400 people who were receiving treatment for cancer in November 2011. Of 118 people who completed the surveys, 35 percent said they were using nutritional supplements, while 11 percent said they were taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements.

The researchers had also given 10 or 50 milliliters (mL) of fish oil supplements to 30 volunteers without cancer. Levels of the ubiquitous fatty acid reached the peak after four hours, in the case of those taking 10 mL, while in the case of those taking 50 mL they remained elevated longer.

Eating herring or mackerel also increased the levels of the fatty acids in their blood. However, eating tuna or salmon had no effect.

The scientists recommend that people on chemotherapy should avoid fish oil, and also mackerel and herring, before undergoing their treatments.

the Dutch National Working Group for Oncologic Dieticians and the Dutch Cancer Society also urge people receiving chemotherapy to avoid fish oil before the time of treatment.

However, according to Stacy Kennedy, an expert on oncology nutrition at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, people should be careful about going too far with avoiding all omega-3 fatty acids. These compounds are an essential component of the diet that the body cannot produce on its own,

Other sources of omega-3 fatty acids are walnuts, flaxseed and chia seeds.

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