Sperm also has its season

A new research reveal that : human sperm are generally at their healthiest in winter and early spring.

Based on samples from more than 6,000 men treated for infertility, researchers writing in American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology found sperm in greater numbers, with faster swimming speeds and fewer abnormalities in semen made during the winter, with a steady decline in quality from spring onward.

The scientists said :” If there is a seasonal pattern, that knowledge may ‘be of paramount importance, especially in couples with male-related infertility struggling with unsuccessful and prolonged fertility treatments’””.

The World Health Organization defines anything over 16 million sperm per milliliter of semen as a normal sperm count.According to this criterion, Eliahu Levitas found that men produced about 70 million sperm per milliliter of semen during the winter. About 5 percent of those sperm had "fast" motility, or swimming speed, which improves a couple's chance of getting pregnant. That compared to the approximately 68 million sperm per milliliter the men produced in the spring, of which only about 3 percent were "fast."

In animal studies, seasonal changes in sperm production and fertility have been demonstrated,it is rare to  link to human.

More article about anthropology please click < Advances in Anthropology >. 

A research about making old brains young again

A report from gizmag RESEARCH WATCH states that we can make old brains young again with the help of switch molecular.

It’s no secret that juvenile brains are more malleable and able to learn new things faster than adult ones – just ask any adult who has tried to learn a new language. That malleability also enables younger brains to recover more quickly from trauma. Researchers at Yale University have now found a way to effectively turn back the clock and make an old brain young again.

As we enter adulthood, our brains become more stable and rigid when compared to that of an adolescent. This is partially due to the triggering of a single gene that slows the rapid change in synaptic connections between neurons, thereby suppressing the high levels of plasticity of an adolescent brain. By monitoring the synapses of living mice for a period of months, the Yale researchers were able to identify the Nogo Receptor 1 gene as the key genetic switch responsible for brain maturation.

They found that mice without this gene retained juvenile levels of brain plasticity throughout adulthood and by blocking the function of this gene in old mice, the researchers were able to reset the old brain to adolescent levels of plasticity. This allowed adult mice lacking the Nogo Receptor to recover from brain injury as quickly as adolescent mice, and also saw them master new, complex motor tasks faster than adult mice with the receptor.

“This raises the potential that manipulating Nogo Receptor in humans might accelerate and magnify rehabilitation after brain injuries like strokes,” said Feras Akbik, Yale doctoral student.

The researchers also showed that the Nogo Receptor slows the loss of memory, so that mice without the Nogo Receptor lost stressful memories more quickly than those with the receptor. The researchers say this suggests that manipulating the receptor could help treat those suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We know a lot about the early development of the brain. But we know amazingly little about what happens in the brain during late adolescence, said Dr. Stephen Strittmatter, Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology, Professor of Neurobiology and senior author of the paper which appears in the journal Neuron.

This Is What Facebook Looks Like Now and the Use of Privacy Settings

At an event this morning, Facebook took the wraps off the service's latest design. The idea is, as Facebook says, to "pull back the chrome," simplifying the way the site works and looks. That means cutting down on all the boxes and lines and shading and sidebars and lord knows what else litters your homescreen right now. It's more like a mobile app than ever before; just the stream of news.

And it actually is similar to a news site in a few ways; it now has different sections, so you can check out what your friends have been doing in specific categories like music, photos, and games. They're all kind of individual feeds, which is clever; services like Instagram (which Facebook owns), plus Vine and Twitter, are much more concise, and this is a way for Facebook to not be quite so bulky.

 And it looks great! Facebook has not always been the nicest-looking service, but the cleaner design, paired with larger images and videos, make it perhaps the most aesthetically appealing version of Facebook yet. Of course, big photos also mean big ads, which could be irritating.

Facebook's new design will begin rolling out today, though not all at once.

That is a report from popsci.To facebook there is an another interesting research from SCIRP about Privacy Settings.The following is the general:

The present study examined disclosure and use of privacy settings in online social networking profiles as a function of the media context (i.e., online versus hard copy (paper and pencil) FacebookTM profiles). Gender was also examined. Overall, participants disclosed more information when constructing a profile for another person when using a hard copy paper and pencil format than an online context. Gender differences were not uniform across media contexts, however, in contrast to traditional disclosure theory, females censored their disclosures more so than males but only for some topics. Only 20% of the sample increased their use of privacy settings. Consistent with patterns of disclosure, descriptive comparison suggests that more settings were employed in the paper and pencil than online context and more privacy settings were employed by females.

The full artical can be download at:<Disclosure and Use of Privacy Settings in FacebookTM Profiles: Evaluating the Impact of Media Context and Gender>.

Do you often use Privacy Settings in FacebookTM?

Food and Nutrition Sciences- Identify Milk Adulteration Using Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometry

Calcium and other vitamins and minerals in milk make it an important part of a healthful diet for people of all ages. The benefits of drinking milk include strengthening bones, improved cardiovascular and oral healthand even relief from PMS.But with the appearance of adulterated milk, it become a threat of our health,especially for infants. How to  Identify adulterated milk is a topic many people are deeply concerned with.The following is a research from scientificresearch publishing about the identification of Calcium and Sodium Behavior to Identify Milk Adulteration:

A fast and direct method for determination of milk adulteration by monitoring of calcium and sodium concentrations variations was described. Milk samples were furnished by a dairy company located at São Carlos (São Paulo State, Brazil) and and spiked with tap-water, whey, hydrogen peroxide, synthetic urine, urea and synthetic milk in the ranged from 5% to 50% (v/v), expect for caustic soda. Caustic soda was added in the milk until establish the original pH. The milk samples were analyzed by using flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS) and no acid digestion process was required. Results showed a significant decrease in the Na and Ca concentrations with addition of synthetic milk and tap-water, a nonlinear variation with addition of synthetic urine, whey and hydrogen peroxide and a largest increase in the Na concentration with addition of NaOH. Correlation between Na and Ca concentrations in pure and adulterated milk were evaluated by paired t-test at a 95% confidence level. Results showed that the method proposed is efficient to identify samples adulterated with tap-water, caustic soda, synthetics milk and urine.

This research applies Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometry,maybe it is more useful for research worker.

Read and download < Study of Calcium andSodium Behavior to Identify Milk Adulteration Using Flame Atomic AbsorptionSpectrometry > for more details .

Food and Nutrition Sciences- Green tea is good for losing weight and skin care,and you should pay attention to tea skill

Green tea is a popular health care products.Especially for female,they often drink geen tea to protects skin and lose weight for it contains Tea polyphenols .But it must be pay attention to that when woman is in the period of menses, geen tea is dangerous!

Otherwise, green tea is suggested to be an antifolate. But a research< Green Tea Is a Poor Contributor to Tissue Folatein a Folate Depletion > from scientific research publishing use Repletion Rat Model demonstrates that “green tea is a poor source of food folate, but EGCg in green tea at a low dose has little effect on folic acid absorption.”

(source:scientific research publishing)

A Research About Relationship of Servant Leadership and Employee Loyalty

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy and also a set of leadership practices. These leaders sets themselves up as an example, lead by serve; The result is also in order to extend its service function. Servant leadership Emphasizes service first.

There is a growing concern about the relationship of servant leadership and employee loyalty recent years, but few are focusing on the intervening mechanisms between them. Especially in China, research on such mediating variables is nearly blank. A research from scientific research publishing , discusses this problem.The following is the part:

 We make our attempt on detecting the role in such relationship by empirical studies through 186 samples using the structural equation model (SEM) method, and reach two conclusions: servant leadership is significantly positive correlated with employee loyalty; employee satisfaction is found to play mediating role which occupies 77% of the total effect between servant leadership and employee loyalty. Our result shows that, to improve employee loyalty, the managers should not only develop their servant leadership style, but also take into consideration the individual needs to improve psychological satisfaction.

(source: scientific research publishing)

Physics & Mathematics- Bacterial Cells as Model Factories

Connecting bacterial with businesses is a new idea.Ichiro Matsumura ，Emory University ，proposes businesses research and biological systems research may learn from each other.The following is the abstract of his research:

Bacteria, like industrial engineers, must manage processes that convert low value inputs into high value outputs. Bacteria are not intelligent, so they utilize self-organizing production systems to accelerate life-sustaining chemical processes. Here I explore two questions. First, can businesses apply the principles of self-organization? Second, can operations researchers contribute to our understanding of biological systems? I explain biochemical concepts in plain terms, illustrated with a few informative laboratory evolution experiments, and describe the organizing principles that underlie complex biological systems. I describe the new disciplines of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, which offer opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration between life scientists and operations researchers.

(origin:scientific research publishing )