Month: September 2016

The love affair between dogs and people is an old one indeed, stretching back at least 15,000 years. Dogs are our coworkers, guides, companions, and family members. But how did they get that way? A new paper published in Scientific Reports proposes an intriguing possibility: dogs have a genetic predisposition to crave human companionship.

Previous studies have suggested a genetic component to the domestication of dogs. To further test that hypothesis, five researchers from Linköping University in Sweden assembled an enormous group of 437 laboratory-raised beagles and gave each one an impossible test. Each dog was brought to a room containing a box with three dishes, and each dish held a treat. To get the treat, the beagle needed to figure out how to slide the cover off the container. But there was a catch: one of the containers was covered with transparent Plexiglas and would not yield its treat no matter what the confused beagle did.

The dog was not alone in the testing room; each was accompanied by a seated researcher, who looked away while the dog wrestled with the puzzle box. The real test came when each dog realized it could not retrieve the last treat. At this point, some dogs gave up and started walking around the room. But others—many others—looked to or approached the researcher for help, a behavior that demonstrated their interest in people.

Each dog’s test was videotaped and its reactions coded and quantified. The researchers then identified the 95 most sociable dogs and the 95 least sociable dogs, and sequenced their genomes, looking for trends.

They found them. The most sociable dogs showed activation in two highly specific genomic regions. The presence of a single marker on the 26th chromosome of the SEZ6L gene was a significant indication that a beagle would have spent more time near and physically touching the researcher during the test. Another two markers on chromosome 26 of the ARVCF gene were strongly associated with seeking out human contact.

These genomic regions are not unique to dogs and, the researchers say, their role in socialization may not be either. Studies in humans have found a relationship between changes in SEZ6L and autism. ARVCF has been linked to schizophrenia, as have COMT and TXNRD2, which both hail from the same genetic neighborhood.

“This is, to our knowledge, the first genome-wide study presenting candidate genomic regions for dog sociability and inter-species communication,” the authors write. They acknowledge that more research is needed to validate their findings. Still, they say, “these results contribute to a greater insight into the genetic basis of dog-human communicative behaviors and sociability, increasing our understanding of the domestication process, and could potentially aid knowledge relating to human social behavioral disorders.”
 

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When your partner goes out of town, sometimes you just need some special one-on-one with your pets. At least that was the case for Chase Stout, whose girlfriend recently went out of town, reminding him not to forget to feed their new kitten. Stout did one better, and made Mr. Wilson a fancy brunch of teeny-tiny pancakes, as we spotted over on The Daily Dot. 

Stout tweeted pictures of the meal, along with the text he sent to his girlfriend, but he assured BuzzFeed that the chocolate part was just a joke—he does know that chocolate is terrible for animals, yes. 

When your girlfriend goes out of town and tells you “don’t forget to feed our cat.” pic.twitter.com/cJk1VRVzUQ

— Chase Stout (@ChaserStout) September 26, 2016

Chocolate chips or not, Mr. Wilson did seem to enjoy his pancakes. No word on whether this will become a weekend tradition. 

[h/t The Daily Dot]

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Sure, you could use polls to predict the outcome of the presidential election. Or you could look to these five predictors, which are as quirky as they are accurate.

THE COOKIE CONTEST

Since 1992, Family Circle magazine has been pitting the potential First Spouses against one another—or at least, their recipes. In 1992, Hillary Clinton ruffled some feathers by answering criticism about being a working mom with a statement that didn’t sit too well with stay-at-home mothers: “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life.”

Family Circle capitalized on the controversy and asked each potential First Lady—Clinton and Barbara Bush—to submit a family cookie recipe. Readers voted on the recipe they liked best, and the Commander-in-Chief-of-Cookies was crowned: Clinton’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies beat Bush’s plain chocolate chips.

The winner of the cookie competition usually goes on to take up residence in the White House—it’s been right 5 out of 6 times, The Washington Post reports. The exception happened in 2008, when Cindy McCain’s oatmeal butterscotch cookies beat Michelle Obama’s shortbread cookies.

The winner of the 2016 election: Clinton. The Clinton Family Chocolate Chip Cookies (the same recipe submitted in 1992), have approximately 1500 votes, while Melania Trump’s star-shaped sour cream sugar cookies have just over 500 votes. You can cast your vote until October 4.

HALLOWEEN MASK SALES

When the Spirit Halloween chain, the largest Halloween chain in the U.S., started keeping track of political mask sales in 1996, the company found that the most popular mask indicated the winner of the election. It may be unorthodox, but the method has accuracy on its side: So far, it has been 100 percent accurate.

The winner of the 2016 election: TBD. Halloween sales are in full swing now; Spirit Halloween has traditionally released its numbers closer to the end of October.

THE REDSKINS RULE

This untraditional predictor goes all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt. If the Washington Redskins win their last home game prior to the election, the incumbent party will win. If Washington loses, the incumbent party loses. It’s not 100 percent accurate, but it’s pretty impressive: The first time the rule was proved wrong was 2012; however, an addendum to the rule had to be added in 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College:

“Redskins Rule 2.0 established that when the popular vote winner does not win the election, the impact of the Redskins game on the subsequent presidential election gets flipped.”

Steve Hirdt, director of information for ESPN’s Monday Night Football, discovered the correlation in 2000 when he was looking for an interesting graphic to put up on Monday Night Football.

The winner of the 2016 election: TBD. Their last home game is against the Eagles on October 16. As of September 29, the Eagles are 3-0 and the Redskins are 1-2.

The NBA FINALS

Starting with John F. Kennedy in 1960, every time a Democrat has been elected, an Eastern Conference team has won the NBA Finals. Now, those aren’t the only times the Eastern Conference has won—Eastern Conference teams have also won in years that a Republican candidate has been elected. But since JFK, no Western Conference team has won the same year a Democrat was elected.

The winner of the 2016 election: Clinton. The Eastern Conference’s Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the Western Conference’s Golden State Warriors, 4 games to 3.

VIGO COUNTY, INDIANA

Since 1888, the people of Vigo County, Indiana, have only gotten the president pick wrong only twice. They voted for William Jennings Bryan over Taft in 1902, and in 1952, they chose Adlai Stevenson instead of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Indiana is known as the Crossroads of America, so perhaps they really do speak for the masses.

The winner of the 2016 election: Trump. We don’t know for sure yet, of course, but early polls suggested that Vigo County is very much in favor of Trump.

Feeling stressed about money? You’re not the only one. According to the American Psychological Association, money is the number one case of stress for Americans, with 67 percent of people ‘fessing up that they’re stressed about their finances and, according to a 2016 study from Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, more than a quarter of you worry about money every single day. This is no way to live.

Sure, paying the bills is stressful, but we’ve got some awesome ways to conquer the tension.

1. SEEK HELP.

Our society sends the message that talk of money should be quiet, but there are plenty of professionals who can help. A fiduciary financial professional can work in your best interest (find a financial planner here or a financial counselor or coach here). Or, if you suspect that the problems are more complex, and if you think your financial issues intertwine with emotions, insecurities, past experiences, or relationship conflicts, consider speaking with a financial therapist, says Megan Ford, a financial therapist at the University of Georgia and the president of the Financial Therapy Association.

2. OPEN SAVINGS ACCOUNTS (PLURAL).

You should have a minimum of two savings accounts, says Mary Bell Carlson, principal at Silverbell Solutions, LLC, a financial counseling and consulting firm. One should be your emergency fund, and you should strive to have three to six months of living expenses in this one, Carlson says.

Next, she recommends that clients have a life fund, which is a savings account for the things that are always due: insurance premiums, quarterly water bills, car maintenance, personal property taxes, and others. “This account is attached to your checking account, and allows you to transfer the funds when the bills come due, but it helps you save for these expenses throughout the year,” she says.

3. NOTICE WHEN YOUR STRESS PEAKS.

You may feel like you’re always stressed about money, but start to pay attention to when your stress is the strongest, says Anne Malec, a financial therapist in Chicago at Symmetry Counseling. For example, if your money stress is at its peak when a stack of bills is sitting on the counter or in your email inbox, commit to making a habit of opening bills as they arrive, and keep a running tally of what will be owed at the end of the month, or decide to pay specific bills before the last day of the month, she says.

“The goal is to maintain awareness of monthly debts so that you are not overwhelmed by their totality at month’s end,” Malec says. The point is that if you can figure out when exactly the money stress is hitting you, then you can figure out how to combat it. “Try to see the stress as a warning sign that your finances need more attention,” Malec says.

4. SET A SMALL GOAL.

Small, manageable goals are easier to achieve than long-shot goals, Malec says. “If you feel you are behind in saving for retirement, and this causes you stress, commit to change to get serious about savings, which will mean reducing your spending or increasing your income or both,” she says.

First, spend time on your budget to determine where you can cut, and get creative. Bring your lunch to work, cut back on Uber trips, put your health club membership on hold, cut back on restaurants. “It will be an adjustment, but your future self will be grateful,” Malec says.

5. TRACK YOUR SPENDING.

A lot of financial stress is caused by simply not knowing where your money is going, Carlson says. “I call this the ostrich with its head in the sand syndrome,” she says. “Somehow, we think that if we ignore the financial problem, it will simply go away.” Carlson encourages clients to estimate their income and expenses before the month starts, then track their spending throughout the month to see how realistic their estimates were. “This helps the client know where their money is going, and helps them make active and engaged decisions on what changes need to be made,” Carlson says.

Jane Fonda was gone, and the exercise video craze had appeared to have left with her. The Oscar-winning actress who popularized aerobics with a series of video cassette tapes in the 1980s and helped usher in a national fitness focus that bordered on narcissism had returned to her acting career. None of her obvious heirs—Jake Steinfeld; Denise Austin; the sculpted, first-name-only Gilad—could seem to equal her cultural standing. Americans were faced with the prospect of going to an actual gym.

Where others saw a dead genre, Billy Blanks and Paul Monea saw opportunity. Blanks was a lifelong martial artist and low-budget film actor who had been refining a kickboxing cardio routine for decades; Monea was an infomercial king who made headlines with the Stimulator, a device that promised to cure backaches despite being little more than a barbecue grill igniter with finger grips.

In less than seven months, Blanks’s name would eventually surpass Fonda’s as a VHS exercise icon using a simple system that would be known the world over as Karobics.

When he found out Karobics was already trademarked, he renamed it Tae Bo.   

Karobics began in 1976, the year Bill Conti’s theme to Rocky became an anthem for anyone in a sweatsuit. Blanks, then 21 years old and a regular on the competition karate circuit, used it as a morale booster for workouts in his basement, shadowboxing and kicking into the air until he was exhausted.

After stints as a janitor and chemical plant worker, Blanks moved to Los Angeles in the late 1980s, intending to parlay his athletic physique into an action film career: He scored parts in video store staples like Bloodfist and The King of the Kick Boxers. At the same time, he wanted to propagate Karobics among the city’s image-obsessed population, opening a fitness studio in Sherman Oaks and earning the respect of celebrity clientele like boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, Ashley Judd, and Sinbad.

“It’s the best”, the comedian told the Chicago Tribune in 1996. “It’s the baddest.”

Tossing the Karobics name, Blanks embraced Tae Bo, a martial arts and dance regimen that promised to burn hundreds of calories per session. A hybrid of Tae Kwon Do and boxing, Blanks said it stood for “Total Awareness of Excellent Body Obedience.” Not wishing a repeat of Karobics, he trademarked it in 1992.

Having studied Fonda’s tapes and how to count beats in ballet classes, Blanks was optimistic his workout would have national appeal. One of the home video distributors he approached early on disagreed, insisting that a black male would have problems convincing a mostly white, mostly female demographic to buy his tapes. Irked, Blanks broke off talks and decided to side with Paul Monea, an Ohio-based producer who sensed Blanks had the kind of charisma that played well in the early morning infomercial hours.

Monea, however, wanted Blanks to peddle exercise equipment. After deliberation, Blanks convinced him that a Tae Bo instructional would prove more profitable. There were already numerous celebrities enrolled in his classes that would be willing to provide video testimonials at no charge.

Monea was convinced. In August 1998, commercials and half-hour spots for Tae Bo began airing. For $59.85, consumers could purchase four workout tapes led by Blanks urging them to leave a puddle of sweat on their living room floors.

The infomercial aired up to 2000 times a day across various markets, costing Monea $1.5 million a week in airtime purchases. But it proved to be a worthy investment: in less than a year, Tae Bo would gross $80 million. The tapes outsold every major home video release of 1999, including The Matrix and Saving Private Ryan.

Previously known only to his Sherman Oaks regulars and karate enthusiasts, Blanks was suddenly inundated with up to 80 calls an hour from news outlets. (He shunted them off to a publicist.) So many people made a pilgrimage to his studio that staff would have to turn most of them away. Bantam Books paid a reported $1.2 million advance for a fitness guide. Blanks was even installed on Oprah for a guest spot—for an entire week.

Like any success in the fitness industry, Tae Bo was besieged by copycats. Blanks’s legal team issued 60 cease and desist letters a week to regional gyms advertising classes using the name without permission. To avoid litigation, prospective Tae Bo instructors could take a certification class from Blanks for $995. Those that didn’t were forced to lead derivative classes like Gotham Box, which married (loose) self-defense maneuvers with a regimented workout.

It was a flattering, if expensive, form of imitation. But Blanks was less charmed by litigation that started to bubble up from within his own inner circle. Sugar Ray Leonard, who had endorsed Tae Bo as a favor to his friend, filed a lawsuit against Monea for using his name without permission. Later, Blanks would struggle with Monea himself, alleging that his partner had cut him an unfavorable deal and had aligned Blanks’s own lawyers against him. (Monea denied the accusations: according to Cleveland Scene, the two settled out of court.)

The legal tussles took the fight out of Banks, who grew concerned the Tae Bo name was entering legally murky territory. By 2008, the tapes had slowed to a trickle, with Blanks in Japan marketing a new routine he dubbed Billy’s Boot Camp. (It sold one million copies overseas.) When he returned to the States, Tae Bo had been dethroned by new fitness trends: SoulCycle, CrossFit, and the higher-energy output of cardio sermons by the likes of Shaun T.

Now 60, Blanks continues to teach Tae Bo in both Sherman Oaks—his son now owns the school—and a location in Dana Point, California. New iterations dubbed Tae Bo Evolution and Tae Bo 2.0 promise to incorporate more equipment and variety. If instructors want to stick with a classic, they can be still be certified by Blanks personally—now for a more reasonable $250.

As scientists continue to find out more about the human microbiome, that ecosystem of bacteria that live on and inside us, it’s clear that influencing the type of bacteria that colonize your skin and gut can have tangible effects on your health and well-being. But just how to change the composition of your bacteria isn’t clear, and there’s still not enough research to show that the probiotics available now are effective at treating specific disorders. Gut bacterial colonies tend to be very stable even in the face of probiotic treatments, and studies have indicated that alterations in the gut bacteria in cases of fecal transplants tend to be temporary.

However, a new study finds that selecting the right bacterial strain for the gut environment can make a major difference in whether or not the probiotic can impact the microbiome. Published today in Cell Host & Microbe, the study was led by Jens Walter, an associate professor of nutrition, microbes, and gastrointestinal health at the University of Alberta.

The research team gave 23 volunteers a daily dose of the probiotic strain AH1206 of the bacteria Bifidobacterium longum, one of the most common species of bacteria found in the gut. Half took the bacteria dose for two weeks while the other half took a placebo, and then the two groups switched for a second two-week round. The researchers periodically checked their gut flora composition via fecal samples in the months that followed. A third of the volunteers who took the probiotic showed lasting changes to their gut microbiome, showing evidence of the strain’s colonization up to six months afterward. In the other two-thirds of the group, the bacteria had disappeared within a month.

These “persisters,” as the researchers call them, had slightly different microbiomes than the other volunteers at the outset of the study. They had lower levels of that particular species or species with similar genes. Essentially, the bacteria could only survive if it was filling a particular gap in the microbiome. If pre-existing bacterial strains had already colonized the gut, the new bacteria had to compete for the same resources, and usually didn’t survive.

With only 23 volunteers (and just eight “persisters”), this study is far from definitive, especially since the researchers didn’t control for volunteers’ different diets. But Walter likens the main idea back to Darwinism. “Competition in ecosystems is especially harsh amongst closely related species because they have the same resource requirements,” he explains in a press statement. But if someone has lost a particular strain of bacteria or their body never had it in the first place, it’s possible to repopulate the microbiome with that strain. By figuring out who would be a “persister,” researchers could potentially personalize probiotics to be more effective, the study indicates.

The study also suggests that the reason commercially available probiotics might be ineffective is that the strains they contain—if they even contain the type of bacteria claimed on the label—aren’t indigenous to the gut, and thus, perhaps unsurprisingly, aren’t very well adapted to survive there.

Come next spring, Trekkies will have a new reason to make a pilgrimage to Los Angeles. George Takei is donating his personal collection of art, artifacts, and Star Trek memorabilia to the Japanese American National Museum, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, the items will be the focus of a new exhibit debuting March 12, 2017.

Playing Mr. Sulu on the original Star Trek series is one of many accomplishments the actor has achieved in his lifetime. During his 79 years, he’s advocated for gay rights, run marathons, raised awareness about the injustice of Japanese-American internment camps, and cultivated a powerful Facebook presence. The items in his collection span his entire career, including his 1973 bid for a seat on the L.A. City Council and his carrying of the Olympic torch leading up to the 1984 L.A. games.

The scripts, photos, sculptures, and Star Trek goodies that make up the gift will be the center of an exhibition titled “New Frontiers: The Many Worlds of George Takei.” In addition to serving on its board of trustees, Takei helped found the museum, and even had his wedding there in 2008. 

[h/t The Hollywood Reporter]

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One question underlies the race for a Zika vaccine: What is this virus, exactly, and how does it work? A new paper in the journal Cell Host & Microbe takes us one step closer to understanding by illuminating the relationship between Zika infection and microcephaly.

Babies with the congenital condition called microcephaly are born with unusually small heads and often have difficulties with brain development. Women who become infected with Zika virus while pregnant are at risk for transmitting the virus to their infants, who may be at higher risk for microcephaly. But just how Zika causes microcephaly has remained something of a puzzle.

To take a closer look, researchers at Stanford University cultured human stem cells in petri dishes and infected them with the virus. As the cells developed into embryos, the team was able to monitor exactly what went wrong with which cells.

Previous studies had focused on neural progenitor cells, which eventually grow into the nervous system. The Stanford team found a vital element in a second type of cell: cranial neural crest cells (CNCC). But where neural progenitor cells are easily killed off by the virus, cranial neural crest cells responded quite differently, secreting two kinds of cytokines, or inflammatory immune response signaling molecules, in reaction to the presence of the virus. That triggered the growth of more new neural cells—and sent the process of brain and skull development off the rails. Some cells split prematurely, and others died. The virus effectively interfered by confusing communication—or “crosstalk,” as the researchers describe it—between cranial neural crest cells and neural progenitor cells.

“Our results suggest that CNCC infection by ZIKV may contribute to associated embryopathies through signaling crosstalk between developing face and brain structures,” they write.

Co-senior author Joanna Wysocka is a chemical and systems biologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She says it’s possible that the virus is affecting still other cell types in addition to these two.

“Neural crest cells are one example,” she said in a press statement, “but such mechanisms may also be relevant to other tissues that come in contact with the developing brain during head formation and could be infected by Zika virus.”

Wysocka emphasized that microcephaly is a congenital issue and not a risk for adults who contract the virus.

The team’s findings are “remarkable,” physician Larry Brilliant tells mental_floss. (Brilliant was unaffiliated with the study.) The notion of crosstalk between the cell types is “phenomenally important,” he said, because “they lead to questions of [whether] therapeutic interventions might be possible even after the virus is transmitted.”

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