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mohandasgandhi: dank-potion: 23andchildfree: Happy women’s day, yo What’s misandry, again? Women perform 66% of the world’s work, but receive only 11% of the world’s income, and own only 1% of the world’s land. Women make up 66% of the world’s illiterate adults. Women head 83% of single-parent families. The number of families nurtured by women alone doubled from 1970 to 1995 (from 5.6 million to 12.2 million). Women account for 55% of all college students, but even when women have equal years of education it does not translate into economic opportunities or political power. There are six million more women than men in the world. Two-thirds of the world’s children who receive less than four years of education are girls. Girls represent nearly 60% of the children not in school. Parents in countries such as China and India sometimes use sex determination tests to find out if their fetus is a girl. Of 8,000 fetuses aborted at a Bombay clinic, 7,999 were female. Wars today affect civilians most, since they are civil wars, guerrilla actions and ethnic disputes over territory or government. 3 out of 4 fatalities of war are women and children. Rape is consciously used as a tool of genocide and weapon of war. Tens of thousands of women and girls have been subjected to rape and other sexual violence since the crisis erupted in Darfur in 2003. There is no evidence of anyone being convicted in Darfur for these atrocities. About 75% of the refugees and internally displaced in the world are women who have lost their families and their homes. Gender-based violence kills one in three women across the world and is the biggest cause of injury and death to women worldwide, causing more deaths and disability among women aged 15 to 44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accident, and war. [source]
stored-snapshots: A rainy day on Milford Sound (by traceyjohns)
mothernaturenetwork: Why small pups outlive large dog breeds Large dog breeds age faster, and the speed at which the risk of death increases with age is greater with larger breeds than smaller ones.
neurosciencestuff: Use It or Lose It “Use it or lose it.” The saying could apply especially to the brain when it comes to protecting against Alzheimer’s disease. Previous studies have shown that keeping the mind active, exercising and social interactions may help delay the onset of dementia in Alzheimer’s disease. Now, a new study led by Dennis Selkoe, MD, co-director of the Center for Neurologic Diseases in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Department of Neurology, provides specific pre-clinical scientific evidence supporting the concept that prolonged and intensive stimulation by an enriched environment, especially regular exposure to new activities, may have beneficial effects in delaying one of the key negative factors in Alzheimer’s disease. The study will be published online on March 6, 2013 in Neuron. Alzheimer’s disease occurs when a protein called amyloid beta accumulates and forms “senile plaques” in the brain. This protein accumulation can block nerve cells in the brain from properly communicating with one another. This may gradually lead to an erosion of a person’s mental processes, such as memory, attention, and the ability to learn, understand and process information. The BWH researchers used a wild-type mouse model when evaluating how the environment might affect Alzheimer’s disease. Unlike other pre-clinical models used in Alzheimer’s disease research, wild-type mice tend to more closely mimic the scenario of average humans developing the disease under normal environmental conditions, rather than being strongly genetically pre-disposed to the disease. Selkoe and his team found that prolonged exposure to an enriched environment activated certain adrenalin-related brain receptors which triggered a signaling pathway that prevented amyloid beta protein from weakening the communication between nerve cells in the brain’s “memory center,” the hippocampus. The hippocampus plays an important role in both short- and long-term memory. The ability of an enriched, novel environment to prevent amyloid beta protein from affecting the signaling strength and communication between nerve cells was seen in both young and middle-aged wild-type mice. “This part of our work suggests that prolonged exposure to a richer, more novel environment beginning even in middle age might help protect the hippocampus from the bad effects of amyloid beta, which builds up to toxic levels in one hundred percent of Alzheimer patients,” said Selkoe. Moreover, the scientists found that exposing the brain to novel activities in particular provided greater protection against Alzheimer’s disease than did just aerobic exercise. According to the researchers, this observation may be due to stimulation that occurred not only physically, but also mentally, when the mice moved quickly from one novel object to another. “This work helps provide a molecular mechanism for why a richer environment can help lessen the memory-eroding effects of the build-up of amyloid beta protein with age,” said Selkoe. “They point to basic scientific reasons for the apparent lessening of AD risk in people with cognitively richer and more complex experiences during life.”
scinerds: The Father of All Men Is 340,000 Years Old A change in the way we understand the root of the tree where Y chromosome originated from has left geneticists amazed Albert Perry carried a secret in his DNA: a Y chromosome so distinctive that it reveals new information about the origin of our species. It shows that the last common male ancestor down the paternal line of our species is over twice as old as we thought. One possible explanation is that hundreds of thousands of years ago, modern and archaic humans in central Africa interbred, adding to known examples of interbreeding – with Neanderthals in the Middle East, and with the enigmatic Denisovans somewhere in southeast Asia. Perry, recently deceased, was an African-American who lived in South Carolina. A few years ago, one of his female relatives submitted a sample of his DNA to a company called Family Tree DNA for genealogical analysis. Geneticists can use such samples to work out how we are related to one another. Hundreds of thousands of people have now had their DNA tested. The data from these tests had shown that all men gained their Y chromosome from a common male ancestor. This genetic “Adam” lived between 60,000 and 140,000 years ago. All men except Perry, that is. When Family Tree DNA’s technicians tried to place Perry on the Y-chromosome family tree, they just couldn’t. His Y chromosome was like no other so far analysed. — “The Y-chromosome tree is much older than we thought,” says Chris Tyler-Smith at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, who was not involved in the study. He says further work will be needed to confirm exactly how much older. “It’s a cool discovery,” says Jon Wilkins of the Ronin Institute in Montclair, New Jersey. “We geneticists have been looking at Y chromosomes about as long as we’ve been looking at anything. Changing where the root of the Y-chromosome tree is at this point is extremely surprising.” (via NewScientist)

" Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. "

- Carl Sagan (via ikenbot)
beconinriot: High Voltage Be Con In Riot GIF based on 15,000 Volts by Melanie Hoff 
mothernaturenetwork: College student invents gel that halts bleeding Veti-Gel is a synthetic version of ECM, which binds cells together and initiates the clotting process.
0rient-express: untitled | by carroll jean.
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