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TAMPA — Most people who use online dating websites seek partners who are out of their league, said a recent study based on heterosexuals in four big US cities.

“Both men and women pursued partners about 25 per cent more ‘desirable’ than themselves,” said the report in the journal Science Advances.

Hardly anyone reached out to people who ranked significantly lower than themselves. 

People’s desirability was determined using a ranking algorithm based on how many messages they received from other popular users on a dating site in New York, Seattle, Boston and Chicago.

“If you are contacted by people who are themselves desirable, then you are presumably more desirable yourself,” said the study.

Using this PageRank algorithm, which is employed by web search engines, researchers could establish a person’s “league”, which they scientifically coined “hierarchies of desirability”.

For some at the pinnacle of the dating game, the flurry of messages from would-be suitors was dizzying.

“The most popular individual in our four cities, a 30-year-old woman living in New York, received 1,504 messages during the period of observation, equivalent to one message every 30 minutes, day and night, for the entire month,” said the study.

While researchers did not reveal the end to this lady’s love story, they did find that the majority of daters on the site tended to reach out to people who were ranked higher than themselves.

They also tended to send lengthier messages to people deemed higher on the desirability ladder.

In most cases, these long-shots fell short.

When there is a big gap in desirability between online daters, “there is a pronounced drop in the probability of reply”, said the report.

And only in Seattle were there signs that long letters were more successful than short messages at getting a potential mate to respond.

The Great War and the Remaking of Palestine
Salim Tamari
US: University of California Press, 2017
Pp. 207

The last decade of the Ottoman Empire was a time of great change, not least the 1908 constitutional revolution led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid, his short-lived restoration in 1909, then the restoration of parliament and the outbreak of World War I. 

In this book, Palestinian historian Salim Tamari examines what these tumultuous events meant for people, politics and culture in Bilad Al Sham, and how they shaped Palestine in particular. “It was during this period that the term ‘Southern Syria’ became synonymous with ‘Palestine’, but the expression gained an added political significance after 1918… in response to the British-Zionist schemes of separating Palestine from Syria.” (p. 3)

To illustrate the changes, Tamari addresses a series of topics such as urban planning, modernisation, infrastructure projects and wartime mobilisation undertaken by Istanbul, the transformation of urban pubic space, as well as developments in education and social services, and the rise of regional, nationalist and religious identities that either supported or challenged the ideology of Ottomanism.

The book is especially interesting because Tamari relies mostly on primary sources, which gives his observations authenticity and added validity. Besides old maps, newspapers, local histories and diaries, he gleans valuable facts from Ottoman-commissioned surveys of the territory and population of Beirut province, which then included Beirut, Akka, Nablus, Tripoli and Latakiyya. 

Tamari’s research challenges conventional wisdom by revealing many nuances, distinctions and outright differences in how the local population reacted to these changes. For example, the constitutional revolution of 1908 was celebrated as giving more freedom by the residents of Jerusalem, Jaffa and Akka, but not Nablus, the town in Palestine most closely tied to the Ottoman Empire. To show the different perspectives, Tamari focuses on the works of two local historians from Nablus, Ihsan Al Nimr and Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh, “both eyewitnesses and participants in the political struggles of that period”. (p. 119)

Al Nimr, from a feudal family, “was a solid supporter of the Islamic salafi currents and Hamidian Ottomanism; while Darwazeh, the plebian militant, adhered briefly to the ideals of the CUP and, subsequently, moved to the Ottoman Decentralisation Party and [later] to the Freedom and Accord Party…” eventually joining the nationalist Faisali movement for the independence of Syria and Palestine. (p. 120)

Tamari finds the writing of both men useful, but credits Darwazeh with a more coherent, class-based analysis of the local conflicts in Nablus.

The book also chronicles changes wrought by the war itself, such as “major population displacements among the civilian population, which significantly affected the world of women in both rural and urban areas of Palestine”. (p. 143)

This meant fewer adult males, but many war orphans and refugees. To shed light on how these changes affected women, Tamari unearthed the notebook of Adele Shamat Azar (1886-1956) in which she describes her efforts to support and educate girl orphans and destitute women in Jaffa during the war. Oddly, her name is absent from most accounts of the early Palestinian women’s movement, because most feminist writers underestimate the importance of charitable associations. Challenging this notion, Tamari contends that her work “was a revolutionary episode in the creation of the women’s movement at the turn of the century”. (p. 141)

Tamari’s book is a valuable contribution to understanding the beginning of the 20th century in the Eastern Mediterranean, when a triangle of interests were pitted against each other and/or redefining their relationships: The Ottomans, the Arab subjects/citizens of the empire and the Allied colonial powers (Britain and France). Tamari evaluates the nature of the ties between Istanbul and the Arab provinces: Were they based on the Islamic bond as he terms it or on a concept of multicultural citizenship? Tamari also enters the debate about the nature of the CUP/Young Turks and the constitutional revolution. Did it herald more freedom, equal citizenship and modernisation or was it promoting stricter centralisation and a narrow concept of Turkification? Addressing this question, Tamari cites a report written during the war: “Muhammad Kurd Ali presented the most sophisticated case for Arab support of an Ottoman commonwealth based on Turkish-Arab unity. He also made the most succinct plea for bilingualism as an instrument of integration in the empire… Contrary to subsequent accusations by Syrian and Arab nationalists, Turkification is not posited as a forceful imposition against Arab culture. On the contrary, the report proposes a parallel process of Ottoman integration…” (p. 86) 

While the outcome of World War I would seem to have made such debate irrelevant, it is still important for understanding this fateful period which ushered in the colonial division of the area and the loss of Palestine to the Zionist movement. It also provides ideas, concepts and real experience related to the meaning of citizenship and a multicultural society, lessons which could promote justice and stability in many countries of the region today.

Many people think that intelligence is something we are born with. New research is showing that this is partly true.

Our brain is composed of 60 per cent fat and every nerve cell is connected to at least 10,000 other cells through chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Providing the right healthy fats and the needed nutrients for making these neurotransmitters can greatly improve your mental health at any age. Achieving an optimal supply of nutrients is central not only to intelligence and memory but also your mood and emotional intelligence. The trick is knowing how: 

Omega 3 oils 

Children eating oily fish three times a week or supplementing omega 3, especially DHA plus EPA and GLA (omega 6), have the lowest risk of developing behavioural and learning problems later in life. Omega 3 oils are important more for emotional intelligence than IQ. DHA is more effective for improving memory while EPA has an anti-depressive, anti-anxiety effect. Some studies even show that giving these healthy fats to pregnant and breastfeeding mothers increased their children’s IQ for 10 years. 

Eggs are good for you

Egg yolk is rich in phospholipids. These make up the healthy walls of our nerve cells. Fish, organic meat and eggs are rich in them. They are particularly helpful for memory boosting and learning difficulties. Free range organic omega 3 eggs are super foods for children.

Methylation nutrients

Faulty methylation (a biochemical process involved in almost all of our body’s functions) is linked to depression, memory loss and even low exam results. It can result from genetic predisposition, an unhealthy lifestyle or a deficiency in methylation nutrients. A simple blood test for homocysteine, vitamin B12, B6, B9 and zinc levels can detect this faulty process and is usually treated by supplementing accordingly.

Sugar makes you stupid

Avoiding high intake of sugar while providing healthy whole carbohydrates ensures proper fuel for brain cells without nerve damage. High intake of sugar is linked to lower IQ. The difference between high sugar consumers and low sugar consumers is a staggering 25 points. Blood sugar imbalances are also implicated in aggressive behaviour, fatigue, learning difficulties, depression and ADHD.

Allergies & food intolerance

The gut-brain connection is now well established. In other words, what’s going on in your gut could be affecting your brain. Chronic food allergy causes abdominal pain, fatigue, poor concentration, anxiety and missing school days, so make sure you test for it and treat accordingly.

Heavy metals

If your child’s performance in school is not improving with the above, it would be worth doing some blood test for heavy metals that are toxic to the brain in order to treat any toxicity. This includes testing for aluminium, mercury, copper and lead.

Optimum nutrition for the mind

In 1988, professor David Benton, a research psychologist, published results of his randomised double-blind study, in which 30 children were put on a high strength multivitamin and mineral, and compared to 30 other children on placebos and 30 children on nothing. Benton measured the IQ and, after seven months, the children on the vitamins had gone up a massive 10 points versus three points on placebo and nothing in the control group. Many studies show that there is no single nutrient that can increase IQ; supplementation of nutrients in combination yields the best result.

The writer is clinical pathologist & laboratory medicine specialist. The article is reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

Parents with depression may be more likely to take their children to the doctor than those without mental health problems, a UK study suggests. 

When parents are depressed, kids are 41 per cent more likely to visit the emergency room, 47 per cent more likely to be admitted to the hospital and 67 per cent more likely to have outpatient clinic visits than when parents are not depressed, researchers found. 

“Our study did not explore the reason for the link between parents’ mental health and their children’s use of health services, however, there are several possible explanations,” said lead study author Kathryn Dreyer of the Health Foundation in London. 

“Parental depression might be a consequence of prolonged illness in a child,” Dreyer said by email. “Additionally, parents with depression may require additional support to help them manage both their health and their children’s health and as a result may use more healthcare services.” 

As reported in BMJ Paediatrics Open, Dreyer and colleagues reviewed one year of electronic health records for more than 25,000 patients registered with a multisite medical practice in London. This included 6,738 children up to 15 years old living in 3,373 households with parents ranging in age from 18 to 55. 

Roughly 41 per cent of kids lived in single-parent households, another 41 per cent lived with both parents and about 19 per cent lived with three or more adults. 

Overall, almost 1,000 kids, or 16 per cent, had a parent diagnosed with depression. 

After researchers accounted for parents’ use of healthcare, parental depression was still associated with increased odds of children using health services. 

When parents had consultations with general practitioners, kids were 7 per cent more likely to see the family doctor than when parents did not have consultations of their own. 

And, when parents had visited an emergency room for care, their children were 27 per cent more likely to also have received emergency care at some point compared to children of parents who had not gone to the emergency room. 

The study was not designed to prove whether or how parents’ own use of medical care or their depression might directly impact how often their children saw doctors. Researchers also lacked data on how much social support parents and children had from grandparents or other relatives, which might influence how often they received medical care. 

While the reasons depressed parents seek more care for their kids are not clear from the study, the findings still underscore the importance of parents getting treatment for mental health disorders, said Dr Katherine A. Auger, a researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Ohio, who was not involved in the study.

It is possible that children of depressed parents get more emergency and urgent care because they don’t get as many well-child checkups as kids whose parents are not depressed, and they’re sicker as a result, Auger said by email.

“Parents with depression may be more worried about their child’s symptoms and take them to the emergency department more frequently. It is also possible that parents of sicker children who need the emergency department may be more prone to depression,” Auger added.

“Depressed parents balancing chaotic work schedules and family routines may choose to seek care at the emergency department as opposed to general clinics because of the easier availability of the emergency department,” Auger noted.

MELBOURNE — A rare set of teeth from a giant prehistoric megashark twice the size of the great white have been found on an Australian beach by a keen-eyed amateur enthusiast, scientists said on Thursday.

Philip Mullaly was strolling along an area known as a fossil hotspot at Jan Juc, on the country’s famous Great Ocean Road some 100 kilometres from Melbourne, when he made the find.

He told Museums Victoria, and Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate palaeontology, confirmed the seven centimetre-long teeth were from an extinct species of predator known as the great jagged narrow-toothed shark (Carcharocles angustidens).

The shark, which stalked Australia’s oceans around 25 million years ago, feasting on small whales and penguins, could grow more than nine metres long, almost twice the length of today’s great white shark.

“These teeth are of international significance, as they represent one of just three associated groupings of Carcharocles angustidens teeth in the world, and the very first set to ever be discovered in Australia,” Fitzgerald said.

He explained that almost all fossils of sharks worldwide were just single teeth, and it was extremely rare to find multiple associated teeth from the same shark. 

This is because sharks, who have the ability to regrow teeth, lose up to a tooth a day and cartilage, the material a shark skeleton is made of, does not readily fossilise.

Fitzgerald led a team of palaeontologists, volunteers and Mullaly on two expeditions earlier this year to excavate the site, collecting more than 40 teeth in total.

Most came from the megashark, but several smaller teeth were also found from the sixgill shark (Hexanchus), which still exists today.

Museums Victoria palaeontologist Tim Ziegler said the sixgill teeth were from several different individuals and would have become dislodged as they scavenged on the carcass of the Carcharocles angustidens after it died.

Getting rid of trash, planting new grass and trees and making other improvements to vacant lots may reduce neighbours’ feelings of depression and worthlessness, a recent study suggests. 

Improving blighted areas could be an inexpensive way for communities to help address local mental health, say the authors. 

“As an emergency medicine physician, I see the downstream effects that poverty and neighbourhood environment have on health all the time,” study leader Dr Eugenia South of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia told Reuters Health in an e-mail. 

“You can’t escape your environment. It is with you day in and day out. We know it is going to have an impact on both physical and mental health and my goal is to make that impact a positive one,” she said. 

Where people live, and specifically the physical environment of their neighbourhood, has an impact on their health, said South. 

“For people living in areas with dilapidated neighbourhood environments, that impact is likely to be negative. Vacant lot greening is a simple and relatively low-cost neighbourhood intervention that can turn an unhealthy environment into a healthy one,” she said. 

As reported in JAMA Network Open, South and her colleagues randomly assigned 541 vacant lots in Philadelphia to one of three groups: greening intervention, trash cleanup only, or no intervention. 

The greening intervention included removing debris, grading the land, planting new grass and a few trees, installing a low wooden perimeter fence with openings, and doing regular maintenance. 

In addition, the study team interviewed 342 randomly selected nearby residents about their mental health, twice in the 18 months before the interventions and twice during the 18 months afterward. Nearly 45 per cent of participants had annual family incomes of less than $25,000. 

The study team found that reports of feeling depressed fell by about 40 per cent and reports of feeling worthless were reduced by about 60 per cent among people living near greened vacant lots compared with people living near lots that were left alone. The rate of self-reported poor mental health was also lower among those living near greened vacant land, but the difference was too small to be statistically significant. 

Simply cleaning up the trash did not have much of an effect. 

“The vacant lot greening intervention, which was created and implemented by the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society, is a simple, low-cost intervention that can be easily implemented and scaled up,” South said. 

A commentary published with the study points out that a growing body of evidence ties contact with nature to health benefits. 

In the 1966 science fiction classic “Fantastic Voyage,” a submarine crew is miniaturised so it can squeeze inside a human body and travel to a hot spot where medical assistance is needed.

A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has adapted this idea for real life, replacing the shrunken squad with specially engineered E. coli bacteria and pairing them with a suite of electronics that fit neatly inside an ingestible pill.

They call their creation an IMBED — short for ingestible micro-bioelectronic device — and used it to detect excess blood in the stomachs of pigs. After finding blood, the capsule sent a wireless signal from within the pig’s body that was read by a smartphone and a laptop computer.

Other IMBEDs outfitted with different bacteria were able to detect one molecule that signals inflammation inside the gut and another that is a biomarker for gastrointestinal infections.

The invention is described in the journal Science.

Although IMBEDs are still years away from being used in patients, gastroenterologists say they are already eager to get their hands on them.

“This has the potential to unlock a wealth of information about the body’s structure and function, its relationship with the environment, and the impact of disease and therapeutic interventions,” Peter Gibson and Dr Rebecca Burgell of Australia’s Monash University wrote in a commentary that accompanies the study.

IMBEDs combine advances in synthetic biology with improvements in electrical engineering.

Inside the capsule are four wells that contain genetically engineered Escherichia coli bacteria. These biosensors have been modified to recognize a particular molecule of interest, such as the blood component heme. A semi-permeable membrane traps the biosensors inside the capsules, but allows molecules from the environment to enter and be detected.

Once the target is identified, the bacteria metabolise it in a process that generates light through bioluminescence.

Beneath each well is a tiny electronic photodetector that can register light from the bacteria. A luminometer chip converts it into a digital signal, and a wireless transmitter sends that signal outside the body.

The MIT researchers, led by microbiology graduate student Mark Mimee and electrical engineering researcher Phillip Nadeau, put the IMBEDs through their paces in the stomachs of six pigs.

After the pigs were sedated, the scientists used an endoscope to deliver about one cup of solution into the pigs’ stomachs. Three of the pigs also got a tiny amount of pig blood.

Next, the team placed two IMBEDs in each pig’s stomach and used the endoscope to confirm that they were fully submerged. It took 52 minutes for the biosensors to recognise the blood, generate light and transmit the signal to the scientists. The signals grew stronger until the IMBEDs were removed two hours after the experiment began.

The IMBEDs correctly identified which three pigs had blood in their stomachs and which three did not, according to the study.

Other experiments outside of animals showed that the IMBEDs could recognise — and respond to — molecules that signal problems in the human gut.

The IMBEDs used in the Science study were 30 millimetres long and 10mm across.

Timothy Lu, a senior author of the study and Mimee’s advisor, acknowledged that the devices were “on the larger side,” but added: “I think for someone who’s motivated, they could definitely swallow it.”

Nadeau said he was optimistic that future IMBEDs could be at least one-third smaller than they are today by combining the luminescence detector, the microprocessor and the wireless transmitter onto a single chip. That would make it more palatable for patients.

“The idea would be you would swallow it and it would pass through the GI tract and eventually you would excrete it,” he said.

Lu said IMBEDs might eliminate the need for colonoscopies. Not only are colonoscopies uncomfortable, but the bowel prep required in advance of the exam alters the physiology inside the intestines, potentially masking signs of disease.

Gibson and Burgell described a future in which smaller IMBEDs could be placed into blood vessels to assess conditions in the circulatory system. Other versions could be implanted in solid organs — just like the five heroes of “Fantastic Voyage” who ventured inside a brain to remove a life-threatening blood clot.

“It is exciting to watch where this technology ultimately takes us,” Gibson and Burgell wrote.

Handing kids plates with pictures of fruits and vegetables may nudge them to serve themselves more of these foods and eat more of them, too, a small experiment suggests. 

Researchers conducted the experiment at a preschool in Colorado. At lunchtime on three days in one week, they gave 325 children plates with compartments that had pictures of fruits and veggies, and they observed how much kids put on their plates and ate. Then they compared those days to three days in a previous week when kids ate with their usual plain white plates. 

On average, kids served themselves about 44 grammes of vegetables each day with the experimental plates, compared with about 30 grammes with regular plates, the study found. They also ate more veggies: an average of 28 grammes a day with the experimental plates compared with 21 grammes before. 

With fruits, kids served themselves an average of about 64 grammes a day with experimental plates, up from roughly 60 grammes before. And, kids ate an average of 55 grammes of fruit with the experimental plates, compared with 51 grammes before. 

 “Pictures on lunch plates may indicate a social norm of vegetable and fruit consumption to nudge children’s dietary behaviours in a classroom setting,” said study co-author Emily Melnick, of the University of Colorado Denver. 

“So, these pictures suggest that other children take fruits and vegetables from classroom serving bowls and place them in those compartments and that they should do the same,” Melnick said by e-mail. 

The kids in the study, like children in many preschool classrooms, ate family style meals because this type of dining can encourage kids to regulate their own food intake, feel in control of their food choices, recognise their hunger levels, and learn about food, Melnick said. 

Before the experiment, researchers weighed exactly how much fruit and vegetables children served themselves on plain white plates during three school days over the course of one week. 

For the experiment week, researchers gave children a five-minute presentation explaining the new plates with pictures showing sections for fruits and vegetables at the start of the week. Then children were given the same meals they had before the experiment, and researchers again weighed how much children served themselves and how much they ate. 

While the kids increased both the amount of fruit and vegetables they added to their plates and ate, the difference in fruit consumption was too small to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance. 

It is possible this is because kids were eating so much more fruit than vegetables to begin with, researchers note in JAMA Pediatrics. At the start of the study, children took about 89 per cent of fruits available, compared with about 65 per cent of available vegetables. 

It’s also unclear if this classroom experiment could be replicated with family meals at home or lead to lasting, long-term changes in children’s eating habits, said Vandana Sheth, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and a dietician and nutritionist in private practice in Los Angeles. 

“If this is repeatable at home, it can be a simple technique practiced by families and have a significant impact on their long-term health,” Sheth, who was not involved the study, said by e-mail. 

“We know that early childhood dietary behaviours can affect their food choices and eating decisions into adulthood and have a long-term effect,” Sheth added. “If something as simple as putting pictures on plates to encourage food choice and amount can work, it’s worth a try.” 

Women who show up in the emergency room with a heart attack are less likely to die if they are treated by a female physician rather than a male, a new study finds. 

Researchers scrutinising data from nearly 582,000 heart attack patients found that women treated by male doctors were 1.52 per cent less likely to survive than men treated by female doctors, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

That means if 1,000 women went to the emergency room with a heart attack, 15 more would die if they were treated by a male doctor, study leaded Brad Greenwood of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities told Reuters Health. 

Intriguingly, women treated by a male doctor were more likely to survive if there were many female physicians in the ER. 

“The key takeaway is that male physicians appear to have trouble treating female patients,” Greenwood said. “The challenge of [future] research is to figure out how and why this occurs. It’s a tricky question and there’s a lot of speculation that comes into it.” 

Male doctors do seem to learn from their mistakes. “We do see improvement as they spend time in practice,” Greenwood said. “But these later benefits come at the expense of earlier patients.” 

Greenwood allows that the researchers’ calculation may be an underestimate since it only includes patients who were eventually admitted to the hospital. Women who were misdiagnosed and sent home would not have been counted in the analysis. 

Why would women treated by male physicians be dying at a higher rate than those treated by female doctors even though they were admitted to the hospital? 

Greenwood suspects the excess deaths are due to delays in treatment because the male doctors took longer to diagnose the heart attack. 

Greenwood and his colleagues reviewed anonymous medical data on 338,642 men and 243,203 women who were seen in emergency rooms in Florida hospitals between 1991 to 2010. Most — 520,078 — were treated by male doctors, while 61,719 were treated by female physicians. 

The Florida database included information such as patients’ age, race, gender and medical history, along with hospital quality. Even after accounting for these factors, women were still less likely to survive when treated by a male ER doctor. 

While noting that this kind of data is “fraught with potential errors and many unmeasured variables, there’s a growing drumbeat of data suggesting that women physicians have better outcomes,” said Karol Watson, director of the Women’s Cardiovascular Centre at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

There are some possible explanations for the new findings, said Watson. 

“Everybody knows, but nobody has proven, that women are better listeners,” Watson told Reuters Health. “And women physicians spend more time with their patients. I can’t tell you how many times the critical piece of information comes as the patient is walking toward the door.” 

The new study highlights the importance of having “a strong female physician workforce,” said Jennifer Haythe, co-director of Columbia Women’s Heart Centre at the Columbia University Medical Centre. 

“As a doctor who is very aware of gender bias particularly as it relates to cardiac disease, one can’t help but wonder if improved outcomes stem from the fact that female physicians take women’s symptoms more seriously, thereby expediting the workup and cardiac care of these women and improving mortality,” Haythe told Reuters Health. 

Acknowledging that we can’t choose the physician who treats us in the ER, Haythe has some advice for women: “They should certainly feel comfortable asking for their symptoms to be taken seriously. If they are concerned that they may be having a heart attack they should ask the treating physician — man or woman — if they have had an appropriate evaluation to determine this, and if not, why not.”