Wie dem auch sei, hier von mir kürzlich entdeckt drei Kinder auf dem Rücksitz, mit dem verheißungsvollen Titel „Single Ladies Devastation“:

Das hat mich ein bisschen an einen alten Schatz erinnert, „Charlie bit my finger — again!“:

Man erfährt beim Lesen einiges über verschiedene Schulen der mehr oder weniger psychologisch-wissenschaftlich fundierten Paarberatung. Und vielleicht auch ein bisschen darüber, wie gesund ein solcher Anspruch an das Leben im Allgemeinen und die Beziehung im Besonderen ist.

Der erste interessante Punkt ist der Unterschied zwischen dem Altern selbst und Krankheiten, die im Alter zunehmen:

Instead, Calerie is investigating how (and if) a spartan diet affects the aging process and its associated diseases. To the Calerie researchers, these are quite distinct. The aging process, which researchers sometimes call “primary” or “intrinsic” aging, refers to the damage that ordinarily accumulates in our cells as we grow older, a natural condition that seems to have limited the maximal lifespan of humans to 120 years. Diseases that accompany the aging process — often called “secondary aging” — are those afflictions increasingly prevalent in the elderly, like cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Überraschend auch, dass körperliche Betätigung trotz aller unbestrittenen gesundheitsförderlichen Eigenschaften nicht so starke Effekte zu haben scheint wie die Kalorienreduktion:

In a study on rats, he compared animals that were lean because of exercise with those that were equally lean from calorie restriction. “Both had an increase in average life span,” Fontana said, but only calorie restriction was able to slow down aging and increase maximal life span. That suggested that “leanness” was not in and of itself determining the rate of aging. “Speaking of humans,” Fontana added, “if you are lean because you are exercising, of course you are doing good, because you’re preventing types of diabetes, some kinds of cardiovascular disease and maybe some types of cancers. But the data suggest that calorie restriction is more powerful. And the people on C.R. are more powerfully protected from diseases than the exercisers.”

Das macht Sinn vor dem Hintergrund der (natürlich evolutionären) Erklärungsansätze, die auch klar machen, warum man tatsächlich in den untergewichtigen Bereich gehen muss, um die vollen Vorteile zu erfahren:

The effects of calorie restriction may simply be an evolutionary legacy, “a metabolic, hormonal and molecular adaptation” to a world of sparse resources, as Luigi Fontana, one doctor in charge of the Washington University trial who also holds a position at the National Institute of Health in Italy, described it to me. By slowing aging and increasing resistance to disease during periods of food scarcity, the adaptive responses to fewer calories increased the odds that animals and humans that lived short lives might survive until they could reproduce. In laboratory settings, calorie restriction seems to “work” — that is, it seems to influence primary and secondary aging — when the diet of an animal of normal weight is curtailed by a significant percentage. The degree of calorie restriction can’t exceed 50 percent, which is when laboratory animals begin to die. Until that point, however, the more severe the calorie-restriction regimen, the greater the health benefit — a lifespan 50 percent again as long in studies on mice and rats. These results might not apply to the overweight. As Fontana told me, moving a heavyset person’s body-mass index from, say, 35 to 29 might increase his longevity by reducing the risk for diseases like diabetes. Yet it is not “triggering the anti-aging pathways” that have been observed at the cellular and molecular levels in animals of normal weight when placed on a calorie-restricted diet.

Zusammen mit weniger kontrollierten Beobachtungen an Mitgliedern von Niedrig-Kalorien-Vereinen (was es alles gibt!) und über längere Zeiträume ähnliche Ergebnisse bringen ist das in ziemlich starker Punkt. Bleibt die Frage, wie praktikabel das alles ist. Und auch hier eine Überraschung: Mehr als gedacht. Nicht einmal die beteiligten Forscher selbst erwarten, dass viele der Versuchsteilnehmer die reduzierte Diät weitermachen. Diesen scheint es aber mehrheitlich sehr gut zu gefallen:

As it happened, I ran into several participants in St. Louis who were in the homestretch. None planned on an ice-cream binge. Instead, they told me, they would continue with their diets while looking forward to estimating, rather than counting, their calories. “I’ll probably do that for a week or two,” Josh McMichael told me. About a month later, in late September, I sent McMichael a note to see how he was faring. He gained eight pounds in the weeks after finishing, he said, but later shed most of that weight. “I tried the new massive burgers from Burger King,” he said. “Twice. Wasn’t worth the side effects.”

Then he added: “I think I’ve gotten over things like that. For the most part.”

Da überrascht es mich wenig, dass die Zusammenstellung der Nahrung, die eine solche Reduktion der Kalorien bei gleichzeitigem Wohlbefinden möglich macht, ziemlich genau das ist, was ich ohnehin gerne esse:

Subjects willing to re-engineer their eating habits appear to have an easier time on the diet. When I asked Susan Roberts, who runs the Tufts study, if there was a danger in Americans trying calorie restriction on their own, without a dedicated team of medical experts offering advice, she suggested that there are built-in safety mechanisms. Roberts said she didn’t think anyone would be successful by reducing portion size. “If you don’t change your diet to a high-satiety diet, you will be hungry, and you will fail,” she told me. A high-satiety diet, she said, was bound to be a healthful diet with a lot of vegetables, fruits and insoluble fiber — the kind found in some breakfast cereals, like Fiber One — that her research indicates has a unique effect in helping calorie-restriction subjects feel fuller, probably because they activate certain receptors in the lower intestine.

Das verbindende Element scheint ein Streben nach einer Art Balance des Selbstbildes zu sein. Wenn man also überzeugt ist, in einem bestimmten Bereich schon tolles geleistet zu haben, erlaubt man sich eher eine Abweichung. Klingt simpel, und stimmt für mich auch mit Alltagserfahrung überein. Fehlen nur noch pädagogische Anwendungen jenseits des Marketings, wo das Konzept natürlich schon angekommen ist.

In early April, Patrick Peterson, a research fellow at Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif., gained some intelligence about the authors’ interests. He studies nasty computer programs by keeping a set of quarantined computers that capture and observe them — his “digital zoo.”

He discovered that the Conficker authors had begun distributing software that tricks Internet users into buying fake antivirus software with their credit cards. “We turned off the lights in the zoo one day and came back the next day,” Mr. Peterson said, noting that in the “cage” reserved for Conficker, the infection had been joined by a program distributing an antivirus software scam.

Der Kampf gegen Conficker markiert den Eintritt in eine neue Ära. Und liest sich sehr schön:

If the misbegotten computer were reactivated, it would not have the problem-solving ability of supercomputers used to design nuclear weapons or simulate climate change. But because it has commandeered so many machines, it could draw on an amount of computing power greater than that from any single computing facility run by governments or Google. It is a dark reflection of the “cloud computing” sweeping the commercial Internet, in which data is stored on the Internet rather than on a personal computer.

The industry group continues to try to find ways to kill Conficker, meeting as recently as Tuesday. Mr. Joffe said he, for one, was not prepared to declare victory. But he said that the group’s work proved that government and private industry could cooperate to counter cyberthreats.

“Even if we lose against Conficker,” he said, “there are things we’ve learned that will benefit us in the future.”

Eating fatty food appears to take an almost immediate toll on both short-term memory and exercise performance, according to new research on rats and people.

Other studies have suggested that long-term consumption of a high-fat diet is associated with weight gain, heart disease and declines in cognitive function. But the new research shows how indulging in fatty foods over the course of a few days can affect the brain and body long before the extra pounds show up.

Ratten verschlechtern sich in bereits gelernten Aufgaben, die Gedächtnisleistung erfordern, innerhalb weniger Tage, und auch die körperliche Leistungsfähigkeit geht um ein Drittel (!) zurück.

“We expected to see changes, but maybe not so dramatic and not in such a short space of time,’’ said Andrew Murray, the study’s lead author and a lecturer in physiology at Cambridge University in Britain. “It was really striking how quickly these effects happened.’’

Although the human data aren’t yet published, the researchers have also performed similar studies of high-fat diets in healthy young men who then performed exercise and cognitive tests. Dr. Murray said he is still reviewing the data, but the short-term effect of a fatty diet on humans appears to be similar to that found in the rat studies.

Ein weiterer Grund, den Anteil an Pflanzen in der Nahrung zu erhöhen … Vermutlich war selbst die fettreichste Ernährung unserer evolutionären Vorfahren weit entfernt vom durchschnittlichen zeitgenössischen Speiseplan.

Die Gründe für die starken und schnellen Effekte sind noch spekulativ:

It’s not clear why fatty foods would cause a short-term decline in cognitive function. One theory is that a high-fat diet can trigger insulin resistance, which means the body becomes less efficient at using the glucose, or blood sugar, so important to brain function.

Fatty foods appear to have a short-term effect on exercise performance because the body reacts to high fat content in the blood by releasing certain proteins that essentially make the metabolism less efficient. “It’s thought to be a protective mechanism to get rid of excess fat,’’ Dr. Murray said. “But it was making muscles less efficient at using oxygen and fuel to make the energy needed to run.’’

Hier ein paar interessante Stellen aus einem guten Artikel:

Quelle: Wilson, H., & Widom, C. (2009). Does Physical Abuse, Sexual Abuse, or Neglect in Childhood Increase the Likelihood of Same-sex Sexual Relationships and Cohabitation? A Prospective 30-year Follow-up. Archives of Sexual Behavior (online).

Zitate von http://wthrockmorton.com/2009/01/20/sexual-abuse-and-sexual-orientation-a-prospective-study/

The main significant finding was reported in the abstract: “men with histories of childhood sexual abuse were significantly more likely than controls to report same-sex sexual partners.” There was no relationship between child sexual abuse and sexual behavior for women. Also, “child physical abuse and neglect were not significantly associated with increased likelihood of same-sex cohabitation or sexual partnerships” (from paper, pg 7). While sexual abuse is associated with an increased likelihood of same-sex behavior, this is not a study that shows homosexuality is caused by sexual abuse.

Eine weitere interessante Einschränkung ist, dass anscheinend mehrere Studien Unterschiede im rückblickenden Bericht von Missbrauchserlebnissen zeigen:

Demonstrating a difference between gay and straight groups on sexual abuse is not novel. Numerous studies have reported at least some difference with only a few reporting no difference in abuse frequency between groups. (http://wthrockmorton.com/2009/06/05/a-major-study-of-child-abuse-and-homosexuality-revisited/)

Abschließend eine teilweise Antwort auf die Frage, warum diese Idee überhaupt so viel Popularität hat:

In evangelical circles, sexual abuse is frequently offered as a major cause of homosexuality, if not the major cause. NARTH often points to the traumatic experience as an important factor. Recently, Focus on the Family promoted a paper by Jeff Johnston on the topic.

Ganz einfach: Das Gemälde hat eine verräterische Ähnlichkeit zu dem schon früher geposteten Grafitti auf dem Kelburn Castle:

Eine kurze Internet-Recherche enthüllt, dass die Brasilianer tatsächlich auch hier in Schottland tätig waren. Und ich bin in der Lage, ein Video der Entstehung nachzureichen:

Und über deren Blog finde ich ein krasses Graffiti-Animations-Video, das ich hier auch teilen möchte:

Die Welt ist so klein!