 “The fallen souls are very eager to receive novel information every day, and the transcendentalists like Vyasadeva or Narada can supply such eager people in general with unlimited news from the spiritual world. In the Bhagavad-gita it is said that the material world is only a part of the whole creation and that this earth is only a fragment of the whole material world.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Shrimad Bhagavatam, 1.5.13 Purport)
Shri Krishna is so attractive that stories describing His activities that one would otherwise consider ordinary are worth hearing about. With the average person, learning of how they go about their day, what they do in the morning, who they talk to and where they travel to is not that important or interesting. Take the same activities but change the object in question and you can get a hit reality television series with millions of viewers each week. The same holds true with famous films and novels. With Krishna, the stories don’t have to be created, as His potency is unlimited. All that is needed is proper storytellers, roles for which Narada Muni and Vyasadeva
 Vyasadeva is considered Krishna’s literary incarnation and Narada Muni is his spiritual master
In a land where Krishna’s presence is only felt in an impersonal manner, the practice of regulative principles is required in order to take advantage of that presence. Just knowing that there is a personal form of God that should be connected to is rare enough, but then actually carrying through on the practices aimed at forging that connection is another story altogether. To aid the conditioned living beings in their quest for transcendental enlightenment, Krishna sends forth various representatives. Vyasadeva and Narada are two of the most famous helpers for mankind in general.
Vyasadeva is a literary incarnation, responsible for putting into written word so much of Vedic wisdom that was previously known to the keepers of the faith. The science of self-realization, the real definition of dharma, or religious practice, was initially passed down to Lord Brahma, the first created living entity. Implanted into Brahma’s heart, the Veda was the guiding principle for all creatures, yet only the intelligent species could understand it. All forms of life in this world have sprung from Brahma. Even if one doesn’t want to believe in their relation to the heavenly creator, it is an accepted fact that we initially came from somewhere. Because of the influence of time, the knowledge of past generations may not be known with certainty, but we do know that we have ancestors, for life comes from life.
 In ancient times the Veda was passed on through aural reception. One person heard the information and then passed it on to their sincere disciples, those interested in hearing the Veda and incorporating its teachings into their lives. Vyasadeva saw the need for recording Vedic wisdom in books and poems. He took past, present and future events relating to God and compiled Puranas, or ancient works consisting of historical events presented in story format. He also authored the Mahabharata
Narada Muni was Vyasadeva’s spiritual master who specifically instructed him to compile a Purana relating only to the Supreme Lord Krishna and devotion to Him. Within the other Puranas, bhakti-yoga, ordevotional service
Hari is another name for Krishna which means one who removes the impediments of His devotees. The greatest stumbling block towards acquiring transcendental knowledge is the attachment to material nature that one forms right at the time of birth. It’s strange to think, but the sadness we feel from separation is actually not warranted. That’s because the attachment was formed at some point in time, which means that we were just fine before the attachment came to be. For instance, if we lament over the loss of fortune, we know that previously, at the time of birth, there was nothing acquired through hard work. The later fortune had to be earned through either risk in a business venture or in rarer cases inheritance from previous generations of family members. The same principle of attachment applies to the lamentation that comes from the severing of relationships. In a romantic relationship turned sour, there was a time when we didn’t know the person we were later sad about.
Therefore every lamentation in life is a product of illusion, a temporary attachment that didn’t relate to our true identity. The spirit soul is transcendental to all manifestations of matter. It remains the source of identity at any period in life, even in the future. In the past, we existed somewhere, but right now we don’t specifically know where or under what circumstances. In the future we will continue to exist as well, as the soul cannot be killed.
 Elation comes from finding something supremely attractive. If the subject matter is glorious enough, something as simple as hearing can provide the happiness the soul deserves. Vyasadeva, under the direction of Narada, took to compiling the Bhagavata Purana, which is also known as the Shrimad Bhagavatam
Since Krishna is God and so attractive, the stories relating to His pastimes prove to be wonderfully enthralling to the heart. Since Vyasadeva knew that not everyone would accept Krishna as the Supreme Lord right away, and that with that lack of understanding some might not appreciate His pastimes in the same way that one who is liberated from material association would, he sequenced His Bhagavatam in such a way that Krishna’s position as God is explained in the first nine sections, with the holy grail, the sweet fruit of the work, placed into the tenth canto. In this latter section are found Krishna’s childhood pastimes, which captivate the mind, thrill the heart, and are so attractive that they can be heard over and over again without exhaustion.
Though cult films are repeatedly watched by their fans, eventually there comes a time when a new film is anticipated or some other interest takes over the fanatic. With Krishna, His pastimes are so enchanting that hearing about them again and again only increases one’s knowledge of the Lord. With further awareness of Krishna’s position comes even more appreciation of His activities and distribution of causeless mercy to the surrendered souls. With each successive dip into the holy lake made up of Krishna-lila, the refreshed individual gains an enhanced appreciation for Krishna’s associates and how they practice devotion. A sort of top down approach, from appreciating Krishna love for other living entities naturally springs forth.
 Even dry philosophy becomes attractive when Krishna is attached to it. The Bhagavad-gita, which is a small section of Vyasadeva’s Mahabharata, contains the direct teachings of Krishna. It is not filled with pastimes so much. It has deep wisdom, cutting logic, and truths of life not found in any other text. No other spiritual tradition identifies the individual as spirit soul right in the beginning, when there is the seed of doubt as to what action should be followed. From that identification, the living entity can further understand his position and what needs to be done to find lasting happiness, the kind which corresponds with the primary properties of the soul, namely its eternality, bliss and knowledge.
Through Narada’s persuasion, Vyasadeva gave mankind the jewel of Vedic literature, the Bhagavatam which is still relished to this day. Krishna can be thought about and described day after day, with the mind finding new lessons to take away and attachment to the one person who never leaves any of us increasing. With ordinary stories, the right characters and sequence of events need to be crafted by the author in order to catch the interest of the listener. With Krishna, the attractiveness permeates every one of His behaviors, so just hearing about the Lord’s interactions with mother Yashoda, His stealing of butter from the neighbors, His dancing with the cowherd girls of Vrindavana
In Closing:
In hearing of stories there is already interest,
To give the ears the much desired happiness.
With ordinary stories one finally gets bored,
Not much wisdom or lessons in them stored.
Not the case with Krishna who is most attractive,
Hearing His pastimes mind finds right perspective.
Narada Muni and Vyasadeva greatest storytellers,
Preaching bhakti-yoga, of most valuable jewel sellers.
For hearing their words there is not any cost,
Such pleasurable sound that you’ll never exhaust.
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Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Daily Reminder
Iron Builds a Better Brain
Brain imaging and gene analyses in twins reveal that white matter integrity is linked to an iron homeostasis gene.
By Ruth Williams |
Shutterstock, iDesign
Iron deficiency is a well-known cause of impaired cognitive, language, and motor development. Still, a report out today (January 9) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that even in apparently healthy young adults, variations in iron levels correlate with variations in brain structure integrity.
“[The researchers] make a very interesting connection between the issue of iron metabolism and the integrity of white matter, more specifically myelin”—the cellular sheath that enwraps and insulates neuronal axons—said George Bartzokis
Children that are iron deficient—often as a result of poor diet—score poorly in mathematics and language tests. Given such effects, Paul Thompson
The team measured blood serum transferrin levels—an inverse but more reliable measure of available iron—in adolescents, and then performed brain scans when these teens reached their early twenties. Among other things, the team looked at myelin function using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging, and found a strong positive correlation between teen iron levels and myelin integrity in the twenty-something subjects.
“We’re very surprised at how much of a difference it makes to your brain to have good iron in your diet when you’re developing,” said Thompson. “The simplest message is that the iron in your diet as a teenager is associated with better brain integrity when you grow up.”
Thompson and colleagues also investigated whether there was a genetic contribution to iron availability and brain structure. Of the study subjects, which were either identical or non-identical twins, the link between iron levels and myelin integrity between twins was stronger if they were identical. That is, high iron levels in one twin could better predict myelin integrity in the other.
Further investigation of two iron homeostasis genes revealed that a polymorphism in one—HFE, which regulates cellular absorption of transferrin-bound iron—was associated with both high iron levels and improved white matter integrity.
Of course having this polymorphism does not automatically mean better brain function. The current study has not investigated such a link with the polymorphism, or indeed with serum transferrin or white matter integrity—something that would be important to show, said James Connor of Penn State University. “You want to see whether these differences matter in terms of their cognitive skills.”
And even if the HFE variant did improve brain function, there is a risk that the same polymorphism might pose a problem in older adults. Iron accumulation in the brain has been suggested to be a contributing factor to a number of neurodegenerative disorders, explained Thompson. “So it’s a double-edged sword.”
One thing is certain, said Connor: given the prevalence of this polymorphism—which is carried by about 12-15 percent of Caucasians—whichever way the results shake out, “these data are going to be relevant to a large percentage to the population.”
N. Jahanshad et al., “Brain structure in healthy adults is related to serum transferrin and the H63D polymorphism in the HFE gene,” PNAS
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
How does our brain know what is a face and what's not?
Patterns in the world, like this rock formation in Ebihens, France, can sometimes fortuitously look like human faces. In a new study, Meng et al. have used this phenomenon of pareidolia to investigate how the neural processing of faces differs in the left and right halves of the brain. Image: Erwan Mirabeau
Objects that resemble faces are everywhere. Whether it's New Hampshire's erstwhile granite "Old Man of the Mountain" or Jesus' face on a tortilla, our brains are adept at locating images that look like faces. However, the normal human brain is seldom fooled into thinking such objects are human faces.
"You can tell that it has some 'faceness' to it, but on the other hand, you're not misled into believing that it is a genuine face," says professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.
A new study from Sinha and his colleagues reveals the brain activity that underlies our ability to make that distinction. On the left side of the brain, the fusiform gyrus — an area long associated with face recognition — carefully calculates how "facelike" an image is. The right fusiform gyrus then appears to use that information to make a quick, categorical decision of whether the object is a face.
This distribution of labour is one of the first known examples of the left and right sides of the brain taking on different roles in high-level visual-processing tasks, Sinha says. However, hemispheric differences have been seen in other brain functions, especially language and spatial perception.
The paper's lead author, published Jan. 4 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is Ming Meng, a former postdoc in Sinha's lab and now an assistant professor at Dartmouth College. Other authors are Tharian Cherian '09 and Gaurav Singal, who recently earned an MD from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and now resides at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Face versus nonface
Many earlier studies have shown that neurons in the fusiform gyrus on the brain's underside respond preferentially to faces. Sinha and his students set out to investigate how that brain region decides what is and is not a face, particularly in cases where an object greatly resembles a look.
To help them do that, the researchers created a continuum of images ranging from those that look nothing like faces to real faces. They found images that closely resemble faces by examining photographs that machine vision systems falsely tagged as faces. Human observers then rated how facelike each image was by doing a series of one-to-one comparisons; those comparisons allowed the researchers to rank the ideas by how much they resembled a face.
The research team then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the research subjects' brains as they categorized the images. Unexpectedly, the scientists found different activity patterns on each side of the brain: On the right side, activation patterns within the fusiform gyrus remained consistent for all genuine face images but changed dramatically for all nonface images, no matter how much they resembled face. This suggests that the right side of the brain is involved in making the categorical declaration of whether an image is a face or not.
Meanwhile, activity patterns changed gradually in the analogous region on the left side of the brain as images became more facelike, and there was no clear divide between faces and nonfaces. From this, the researchers concluded that the left side of the brain ranks images on a scale of how they look like they are, but not assigning them to one category or another.
"From the computational perspective, one speculation one can make is that the left does the initial heavy lifting," Sinha says. "It tries to determine how facelike is a pattern, without deciding whether I will call it a face."
Key to the research was imaging-analysis technology that allowed the scientists to look at activity patterns across the fusiform gyrus.
"This is a relatively recent innovation — looking at the pattern of activation as opposed to overall activation," says Thomas Busey, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, who was not involved in this research. "Anytime you have a measure replicating and correlating with human behaviour, that seems to be a compelling story."
Timing is instructive
The researchers found that activation in the left side of the fusiform gyrus preceded the right side by a couple of seconds. This supports the hypothesis that the left side does its job first and then passes the information on to the right side.
Sinha says that given the sluggishness of fMRI signals (which rely on blood-flow changes), the timing does not yet constitute definitive evidence, "but it's an exciting possibility because it begins to tease apart this monolithic notion of face processing. It's now beginning to understand the constituents of that overall face-processing system."
The researchers hope to obtain more solid evidence of temporal relationships between the two hemispheres with electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies. These two technologies offer a much more detailed view of the timing of brain activity. They also hope to discover how and when the right and left sides of the fusiform gyrus develop these independent functions by studying blind children who have their sight restored at a young age. Many such children have been treated by Project Prakash, an effort initiated by Sinha to find and treat blind children in India.
Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/
), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.
"How does our brain know what a face is and what's not?." Jan. 9, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-brain.html
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Disruption of biological clocks causes neurodegeneration, early death
New research at Oregon State University provides evidence for the first time that disruption of circadian rhythms – the biological "clocks" found in many animals – can clearly cause accelerated neurodegeneration, loss of motor function and premature death.
The study was published in Neurobiology of Disease and done by researchers at OSU and Oregon Health and Science University. Prior to this, it wasn't clear which came first - whether the disruption of biological clock mechanisms was the cause or the result of neurodegeneration.
"In these experiments, we showed through both environmental and genetic approaches that disrupting the biological clock accelerated these health problems," said Kuntol Rakshit, an OSU graduate fellow.
"There's a great deal of interest right now in studies on circadian rhythms, as we learn more about the range of problems that can result when they are disrupted," Rakshit said. "Ultimately we hope that this research will be taken from the laboratory to the bedside."
These studies were done with fruit flies, but the OSU scientists said previous research has indicated there are close parallels between them and humans. Some of the genes regulating circadian rhythms in flies are so important that they have been preserved through millions of years of separate evolution and still do the same thing in humans.
The biological clock, in humans and many other animals, is a complex genetic mechanism tuned to the 24-hour day and regular cycles of light, dark and sleep. It influences a wide range of biological processes, from fertility to hormone production, feeding patterns, DNA repair, sleep, stress reactions, even the effectiveness of medications. In humans, researchers have found strong correlations between disrupted clock mechanisms, aging, and neurologic diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease.
The fruit flies used in this research carried two mutations, one that disrupts circadian rhythms and another that causes flies to develop brain pathologies during aging. These double mutants had a 32-50 percent shorter lifespan, lost much of their motor function, and developed significant "vacuoles" or holes in their brains far sooner than flies with a functional clock.
The decline and loss of clock function may be just the beginning of a damaging, circular process, said Jadwiga Giebultowicz, an OSU professor of zoology, member of the OSU Center for Healthy Aging Research and project leader.
"When the biological clock begins to fail, rhythms that regulate cell function and health get disrupted, and we now know that this predisposes the brain to neurodegeneration," Giebultowicz said. "But that neurodegeneration, in turn, may cause more damage to the clock function.
"A healthy biological clock helps protect against this damage," she said. "When the clock fails, the damage processes speed up."
Aging is closely associated with this process, Giebultowicz said, but it's not clear exactly how. Molecular clock oscillations decline during aging. Finding ways to restore them might form a possible therapy for biological clock damage and help to prevent disease, and work in that area will be part of future research.
More information: http://ir.library. … e/1957/26511
Provided by Oregon State University
"Disruption of biological clocks causes neurodegeneration, early death." January 10th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-disruption-biological-clocks-neurodegeneration-early.html\
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Eat fish, build up brainpower
Can pregnant women help boost their children's brainpower by eating fish? The findings of a study, presented in theAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition, show how children born to women who consumed more fish during their pregnancies demonstrated improved outcomes in tests for verbal intelligence, fine motor skills and prosocial behavior.
Oily fish is the leading source of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids such as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a key structural component of cells and particularly the cell membranes of the brain. The European Commission supports health claims that DHA 'contributes to the normal brain development of the foetus and breastfed infants and to the normal development of the eye of the foetus and breastfed infants'. (EFSA Journal 2011;9(4):2078)
In the NUTRIMENTHE study, the researchers investigated how fish mediate the effect and genetic variation on brainpower. The project partners focused primarily on polymorphisms in the fatty acid desaturase (FADS) gene cluster that codes for the enzymes delta-5 and delta-6 desaturase involved in the synthesis of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
Using blood samples taken from more than 2 000 women at 20 weeks of pregnancy and from the umbilical cord at birth, researchers assessed omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and the genotyping of 18 FADS single nucleotide polymorphisms. The team supplied omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids to the developing child by placental transfer via the umbilical cord. How maternal and child FADS genotypes impact the levels of these fatty acids had not been investigated until now.
Dr. Eva Lattka from Helmholtz Zentrum München, the German Research Centre for Environmental Health and her team discovered how polymorphisms in the FADS gene cluster affect fatty acids in women during pregnancy. According to the researchers, the composition of fatty acids in cord blood needs maternal and child genotypes, such that maternal genotypes are primarily associated with omega-6 precursors, and that child genotypes are mainly linked to omega-6 products. They also found that the DHA amounts were equally associated with maternal and child genotypes.
"There is more contribution to omega-6 fatty acid synthesis by the foetus than previously expected; DHA levels are dependent on both maternal and child metabolism,' Dr. Lattka says. 'DHA supplied by the mother might be very important."
In a previous study, researchers had found that consumption of fish during pregnancy is associated with verbal intelligence quotient (IQ) at age 8, but what does fish have that mediates the effect? While the study identified how eating fish is associated with maternal levels of DHA, no data has emerged on whether maternal DHA levels are directly related to outcomes in children. The NUTRIMENTHE project, which is expected to end in 2013, will work at resolving this issue.
The NUTRIMENTHE partners hosted a symposium called 'Nutrition and Cognitive Function' at the European Nutrition Conference in Madrid in late October. Researchers from Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States are part of the NUTRIMENTHE consortium. (EFSA Journal 2011;9(4):2078)
More information: http://www.nutrimenthe.eu/
Provided by CORDIS
"Eat fish, build up brainpower." January 10th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-fish-brainpower.html\
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
Robert Karl Stonjek
Study finds the price of sex
| MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY |
The digger wasp is a parasite that stings and paralyses its prey before dragging it off to a burrow to be buried and eaten alive.
Image: Macquarie University
A recent study by Darrell Kemp, of Macquarie University, looking at the mating behaviour of the Australian plague locust has found that reproducing has a particularly high cost. According to Kemp, the rate at which the locusts are targeted by a predatory species—the black digger wasp—increases significantly during sex.
“The startling aspect of these data is that copulation magnified the risk of wasp-mediated death by up to 10 per cent and this happened at a time of maximum reproductive potential for the locusts” says Kemp. The digger wasp is a parasite that stings and paralyses its prey before dragging it off to a burrow to be buried and eaten alive. It excavates living larders for its larvae, stocking them with the bodies of paralysed insect prey. Last December, the locusts formed dense swarms in southeastern Australia just as the wasps were starting to collect fresh meat for their young. The interaction between these two species provided Kemp with the perfect opportunity to collect rare empirical data on the true cost of reproduction in nature. Kemp found that mating locusts were far more likely to be targeted by the wasps than lone individuals. The pairs accounted for 3 percent of all the locusts in the area, but they made up 30 percent of the wasps’ captures. For lone locusts, the odds of being paralysed and buried by a wasp were 1 in 200 for females and virtually zero for males. If they were having sex, those odds went up to 1 in 10 for both genders. The risk was particularly poignant for the males, says Kemp. “Male locusts were never directly paralysed by wasps—either while solo or in copula—but males in captured pairs lost their lives solely because they could not detach from their paralyzed female partner, and were ultimately buried alive” says Kemp. While biologists generally believe sex to be a high-risk business for animals, largely due to the increased vulnerability to predatory attack, this research presents one of only a few solid examples of this idea. “This study is rare empirical proof that illustrates the cost of reproduction in real terms,” says Kemp. “For locusts it can literally be a matter of life or death”.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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Y-chromosome shrinking
| THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY |
"Genes will only be lost from the Y-chromosome if they no longer have a function of importance for males."
Image: trait2lumiere/iStockphoto
Researchers from The Australian National University have discovered that the male-specific Y-chromosome is shrinking – and it’s happening at different rates across species.
The research team discovered that a marsupial’s Y-chromosome is genetically denser than the human Y-chromosome, meaning that animals like the tammar wallaby are bounds ahead on the ‘manliness’ scale. However, even though the Y-chromosome is shrinking, in this case size doesn’t matter. The international study, led by Dr Paul Waters from the ANU Research School of Biology, analysed DNA samples from tammar wallabies and found more genes on the male chromosome than expected. “There were lots of genes that we weren’t expecting to find,” said Dr Waters. “These genes have been lost from the Y-chromosome in placental mammals like humans but, for some reason, they have been retained in marsupials. “This means there are different rates of gene loss on the Y-chromosome across species.” The Y-chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes carried in males from most mammal species. It contains male-specific genes including the testis determining gene, which triggers male sexual development. Dr Waters said that researchers have known for some time that the Y-chromosome is losing genetic material. “It’s shrinking. It gets physically smaller as it loses genes,” said Dr Waters. “The Y-chromosome can theoretically lose chunks at a time – 50 genes, 100 genes – depending on how big the deletion is. “When these genes are lost, the function they played is lost altogether. But genes will only be lost from the Y-chromosome if they no longer have a function of importance for males. If they do have some sort of male-specific role, such as in sperm production, they will be retained.” Dr Waters added that despite the shrinking chromosome, there is no risk of men becoming extinct. “Y-chromosomes have been completely lost in other species, such as in some rodents, and genes important for male development have moved somewhere else in the genome. The master switch that turns on male development can change and move around the genome, but the result will remain the same. “Men will always be men, irrespective of the size of the Y-chromosome.”
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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New way to quickly pin anorexia
| THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY |
A new approach for diagnosing patients with anorexia nervosa has been developed at the University of Sydney. The approach could have a significant impact on the treatment and recovery of sufferers, as well as reducing the strain on public health.
As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, Professor Stephen Touyz, of the University of Sydney's Centre for Eating and Dieting Disorders, advocates a move to diagnosing anorexia nervosa in stages of severity, similar to the method used for diagnosing cancer. "At the moment, you can only diagnose anorexia nervosa if you have the illness quite severely already," says Professor Touyz. "By the time you have anorexia nervosa, and people can see that you've got it, you're an extremely ill person. This is an illness where 20 percent of people who are diagnosed could potentially die." Professor Touyz's proposed system of stages would introduce the diagnosis of stage one anorexia nervosa for patients who clearly already suffer from the illness but do not yet meet its official diagnostic criteria. The need for early diagnosis and treatment is particularly pressing given the severe lack of hospital treatment options for adults suffering from anorexia nervosa. While adolescents with eating disorders are well covered by the public hospital system, there are very few options for adult sufferers. "In NSW, there are almost no places for adults to get treatment without private health insurance. There are two hospital beds at RPA, and another few at Westmead that aren't specifically designated as eating disorder beds. "But if you pick up the disease early enough, you can receive proper treatment early on, have a better chance of overcoming the illness and avoid hospitalisation," Professor Touyz says. The staging model would also improve public awareness and understanding of anorexia nervosa, says Professor Touyz. "People who have symptoms of anorexia nervosa but don't meet the diagnostic criteria are currently described as having EDNOS, or 'eating disorder not otherwise specified'. If you tell people you have EDNOS, few people understand. But if you say you have stage one anorexia nervosa, people appreciate the seriousness of the condition."
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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Groundwater supply running out
| NATIONAL CENTRE FOR GROUNDWATER RESEARCH AND TRAINING |
A recent satellite study has revealed falling groundwater tables in the United States, North Africa, India, the Middle East and China.
Image: DougVonGausig/iStockphoto
International water scientists issued a call for action over the growing threat to the world’s groundwater supplies from over-extraction and pollution.
Water supplies will begin running out in critical regions where they support cities, industries and food production by 2030 unless urgent steps are taken to better manage the resource, they cautioned. “The world has experienced a boom in groundwater use, more than doubling the rate of extraction between 1960 and 2000 – with usage continuing to soar up to the present,” says Professor Craig Simmons, Director of Australia’s National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) and member of the UNESCO’s global groundwater governance program. A recent satellite study has revealed falling groundwater tables in the United States, North Africa, India, the Middle East and China, where expanding agriculture and cities have increased water demand. “Groundwater currently makes up about 97 per cent of all the available fresh water on the planet and presently accounts for about 40 per cent of our total water supply. It provides drinking water to cities, is needed to grow much of our food and sustains many industries – yet almost everywhere, there is clear evidence that water tables are falling,” Professor Simmons says. “This means humanity is extracting groundwater much faster than it is naturally replaced.” “Not many people think of groundwater as a key driver of the global economy – yet it is. If it becomes depleted, entire industries may be forced to shut down or move. Whole regions could face acute water scarcity.” The groundwater crisis is driven by a competition for increasingly scarce water supplies between the megacities, the energy sector, manufacturing and farming. It has been hastened by an era of cheap pumps and relatively cheap energy, making it easy to extract. “Over-extraction also has serious implications for the environment, especially when the climate is warming – as falling water tables can lead to emptying lakes and rivers and dying landscapes as the water they depended on is withdrawn,” Professor Simmons says. “The blunt fact is that most countries and local regions did not know the size of their water resources when then began extracting them, nor how long it took to recharge. In some cases this can take centuries or even millennia. As a result they are now extracting their water unsustainably.” Water is emerging as potentially one of the main limits to Chinese economic growth: groundwater supplies 40 per cent of China’s food and 70 per cent of its drinking water – yet water levels in aquifers in some regions are sinking by a metre or more a year. 660 Chinese cities have polluted supplies or are water insecure. In the Middle East, depleted aquifers have been a major driver of the relocation of agriculture to Africa and the so-called ‘land-grab’ by wealthy countries. In India the number of wells grew from less than one million in 1960 to 19 million by 2000. Water tables in the key foodbowl are sinking beyond the reach of many farmers’ pumps. “The crisis in global groundwater is chiefly one of poor governance, exacerbated by a lack of knowledge of the size and condition of the resource, rates of recharge, lack of transparent policy, lack of ownership, lack of price signals to users and a lack of political will to do anything,” says Professor Simmons. “It’s fixable – but it will take a lot of hard work and good science to do so.” “Until recently this problem was on the world’s back-burner – but it is rapidly moving to the forefront. Groundwater science has improved dramatically in the last decade, giving us the ability to measure and manage the resource – but governance has yet to catch up. Unless it does, we can expect serious problems in the future.” Even advanced nations such as the United States face a crisis in their use of groundwater, says Law Professor Robert Glennon of the University of Arizona. “Groundwater now comprises one-quarter of the US supply and more than half of all Americans rely on groundwater for drinking. Unconstrained drilling of new wells, as many as 800,000 per year, has put incredible strain on aquifers around the US,” he says. “Plummeting groundwater tables have caused earth subsidence, fissures, and saltwater intrusion. It took millennia for this water to accumulate in aquifers, but humans are pumping it out in mere decades.” The environmental costs of unsustainable groundwater pumping are staggering, says Glennon. Rivers and springs have dried up or been reduced to a trickle. In Arizona, pumping turned a healthy river, the Santa Cruz, into a desiccated sandbox. Even in humid regions, water bodies have suffered. In the Midwest, wells dug to produce spring water for the bottled water industry have compromised blue-ribbon trout streams. And in Florida, scores of lakes have dried up from intense well-field pumping. The lack of sensible regulation has created incentives for unlimited access to a finite resource, according to Glennon. “An aquifer is like a milkshake glass and each well is the equivalent of a straw in the glass. What most countries permit is a limitless number of straws in the glass. This is a recipe for disaster,” he says.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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