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Saturday February 26, 2011

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* The Benefit of a Bilingual Brain * Hibernating Bears * World's Oldest Water * Strange New Worlds * Lambs and Longevity *

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The Benefit of a Bilingual Brain


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It is well known that stimulating activities, including crossword puzzles or learning to play the piano, are beneficial to the brain's cognitive ability.  One of the areas of cognition that benefits is executive function, which is key to thought processes like memory.  But a new study by Dr. Ellen Bialystok, Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto, has determined that being bilingual also boosts the brain's performance and can even delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.  The study involved over 400 patients - divided into bilingual and monolingual groups  - and all at equal stages of probable Alzheimer's disease.  The study showed that bilingual patients had been diagnosed 4.3 years later on average, and had reported the onset of symptoms over 5 years later than the monolingual patients.  Being able to speak a second language will not prevent Alzheimer's, but it can help patients cope with the disease for longer.

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Hibernating Bears

black_bear.jpg Courtesy Øivind Tøien
One of the main reasons animals hibernate is to shut down and conserve energy in periods when there is no food available, such as winter.  During the 5 to 7 months that black bears hibernate, their body temperature decreases and metabolism slows.  But new research by Dr. Craig Heller, a Professor of Biology and Human Biology at Stanford University in California, has found a few surprises.  One is that bears regulate their body temperature over a cycle of a few days.  It drops to as low as 30 degrees then rises to 35 or 36 degrees, just below normal.  But the big surprise was that the bear's metabolism dropped to 25% of normal, much lower than previously thought.  This study in Alaska was the first to monitor black bear's body temperature, heart rate, muscle activity and metabolism throughout their entire hibernation period.  It is hoped that understanding bear hibernation could be applied to many human ailments, such as inducing similar hypothermic conditions immediately following a stroke to reduce the loss of brain function.  

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World's Oldest Water
oldest_water.jpg Finding the Earth's oldest water in a South African gold mine, courtesy Dr. Barbara Sherwood Lollar
Water found three kilometres down in the gold mines of South Africa's Witwatersrand Basin are believed to be the oldest on Earth.  The water is found in fractures in the two-to-three billion-year-old rock and has been isolated from the surface for a long period of time, possibly tens of millions of years.  New research by Dr. Barbara Sherwood Lollar, from the Department of Geology at the University of Toronto, suggests the key to the water's age is the presence of neon.  The neon's specific isotope signature tells them that it was trapped within this rock at least two billion years ago.   Another element of this study was that one of the fracture systems in the rock contained the deepest known microbial ecosystems on Earth.  These are organisms that exist without sunlight and thrive on the chemical energy that originates from rock.  Because the rock that comprises the Canadian Shield is the same age, it is reasonable to believe that similar findings could be made here in Canada.  

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Strange New Worlds


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Over the last 15 years, the hunt for planets around other stars has bagged a lot of big game.  Using new technology and innovative methods, astronomers have detected hundreds of planets, and have unconfirmed observations of more than a thousand others.  Dr. Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, has been at the forefront of what has become the hottest field in astronomy.  His group was the first to directly image an extra-solar planet.  In his new book, Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond our Solar System, he explores the past, present and future of our search for alien planets, and our progress to the ultimate goal of finding Earth-like planets and, perhaps, life elsewhere in our galaxy.   

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Lambs or Longevity

soay_sheep.jpgSoay Sheep, courtesy Arpat Ozgul/University of Edinburgh
Soay sheep live on remote islands off the coast of Scotland.  They're untroubled by predators, but lack of food, harsh weather and disease take a heavy toll.  Dr. Andrea Graham, an immunologist and evolutionary biologist at Princeton University and the University of Edinburgh, and her colleagues have been investigating the relationship between immunity, fertility and longevity in these animals.  It appears that the sheep that live the longest have the strongest immune systems, but pay a price for that with reduced fertility.  This is a classic evolutionary trade-off that might also cast light on questions of human immunity and fertility.

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Theme music bed copyright Raphaël Gluckstein, Creative Commons License by-nc-nd-2.0

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