Sisters serve as confidants, sources of support and mentors during intimate conversations

Public release date: 15-Oct-2013
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Contact: Jesslyn Chew
ChewJ@missouri.edu
573-882-8353
University of Missouri-Columbia

Older sisters could aid prevention efforts aimed at reducing risky sexual behaviors among teen girls

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Adolescence can be an impressionable time for girls as they begin forming ideas about dating and sexuality. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that sisters often take on key roles of confidants, sources of support and mentors during conversations about romantic relationships. Sisters may be helpful in health education efforts to promote safe-sex practices and healthy romantic relationships.

"Our findings indicate that sisters play important roles as adolescent girls form ideas about romantic relationships and sexuality," said Sarah Killoren, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at MU and the study's lead author. "Sisters are important communication partners when it comes to these sensitive topics."

Killoren says that older sisters should be included in family-oriented programs designed to help teens make better choices, such as abstaining from intercourse, practicing safe sex or developing healthy romantic relationships.

Killoren found sisters most frequently played the role of confidant. Sisters displayed this role by giving information about themselves and by asking for more information about their sisters' lives. The disclosures made during their conversations revealed levels of intimacy between sisters, Killoren said. The second role, sources of support, was displayed when sisters encouraged their siblings' ideas about dating and sexuality. The mentor role was displayed when sisters served as role models for one another, most frequently by giving advice.

"Given their age, older sisters were more likely to have advice to share and have romantic relationships and sexual experiences from which their younger sisters can learn," Killoren said.

Younger sisters commonly reported learning from older sisters' experiences, especially their older sisters' negative dating and sexual experiences, Killoren said.

"Younger sisters frequently commented on their older sisters' negative experiences, such as teen pregnancy and abusive relationships, and made decisions to be different," Killoren said. "Learning only from negative experiences could occur because younger sisters only consciously identify the experiences of their sisters that they do not want to repeat."

Sisters share similar views on dating and sex, which is partly because they have grown up in the same home, Killoren said.

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The article, "Sibling Conversations about Dating and Sexuality: Sisters as Confidants, Sources of Support, and Mentors," will be published in Family Relations. The Department of Human Development and Family Studies is part of the MU College of Human Environmental Sciences.

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Public release date: 15-Oct-2013
[


| E-mail



| Share

]

Contact: Jesslyn Chew
ChewJ@missouri.edu
573-882-8353
University of Missouri-Columbia

Older sisters could aid prevention efforts aimed at reducing risky sexual behaviors among teen girls

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Adolescence can be an impressionable time for girls as they begin forming ideas about dating and sexuality. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that sisters often take on key roles of confidants, sources of support and mentors during conversations about romantic relationships. Sisters may be helpful in health education efforts to promote safe-sex practices and healthy romantic relationships.

"Our findings indicate that sisters play important roles as adolescent girls form ideas about romantic relationships and sexuality," said Sarah Killoren, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at MU and the study's lead author. "Sisters are important communication partners when it comes to these sensitive topics."

Killoren says that older sisters should be included in family-oriented programs designed to help teens make better choices, such as abstaining from intercourse, practicing safe sex or developing healthy romantic relationships.

Killoren found sisters most frequently played the role of confidant. Sisters displayed this role by giving information about themselves and by asking for more information about their sisters' lives. The disclosures made during their conversations revealed levels of intimacy between sisters, Killoren said. The second role, sources of support, was displayed when sisters encouraged their siblings' ideas about dating and sexuality. The mentor role was displayed when sisters served as role models for one another, most frequently by giving advice.

"Given their age, older sisters were more likely to have advice to share and have romantic relationships and sexual experiences from which their younger sisters can learn," Killoren said.

Younger sisters commonly reported learning from older sisters' experiences, especially their older sisters' negative dating and sexual experiences, Killoren said.

"Younger sisters frequently commented on their older sisters' negative experiences, such as teen pregnancy and abusive relationships, and made decisions to be different," Killoren said. "Learning only from negative experiences could occur because younger sisters only consciously identify the experiences of their sisters that they do not want to repeat."

Sisters share similar views on dating and sex, which is partly because they have grown up in the same home, Killoren said.

###

The article, "Sibling Conversations about Dating and Sexuality: Sisters as Confidants, Sources of Support, and Mentors," will be published in Family Relations. The Department of Human Development and Family Studies is part of the MU College of Human Environmental Sciences.

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/uom-ssa101513.php
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Michael Fassbender Talks About His Longest Relationship With GQ!

Michael Fassbender looks like a God among insects on the cover of GQ, and never let anyone tell you differently!

We all know Fassy has a huge, long…helmet whenever he plays Magneto (always wear protection), but the metal bending actor (who can manipulate our hard objects) talked about the longest relationship he's had:

“I think the longest relationship that I’ve been in was two years. I started doing this when I was 17, so I guess in my dating, adult life, that kind of covers it.”

Wow, Michael might be in 12 Years a Slave, but he's only been 2 years a boyfriend tops! What a Shame!

We hope one day Michael share the rest of his days of future past with the love of his life! He's so mutantly charming!

[Image via Peggy Sirota/GQ.]

Tags: 2, dating, gq, interview, longest, magneto, michael fassbender, relationship, two, women, years

Source: http://perezhilton.com/2013-10-15-michael-fassbender-long-relationship-ever-had-gq
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Finally, a Way to Read Minds

For now, the technique applies to quantitative thinking (doing math problems and calculating numbers) but the process could launch ways of reading other types of thoughts as well. The new research, published in Nature Communications, was the first to “read the minds” of patients who were not simply engaging in lab experiments but were going about their daily lives, albeit in a hospital where they were awaiting surgery. The patients, who had epilepsy, volunteered to have electrodes placed on the surface of their brains in order to determine what region was causing their seizures and whether the dysfunctional regions could be safely removed with surgery.

Because the electrodes remained in the patients’ brains for several days, Dr. Josef Parvizi, associate professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford University, saw an opportunity to eavesdrop on their “thoughts” and link up specific brain activity with behaviors and reactions such as pain, eating, drinking, and talking. With the patients’ permission, Parvizi and his colleagues videotaped them as they interacted with friends, family and hospital staff and connected the participants’ experiences to their brain activity to get a more detailed and realistic understanding of brain function that static brain scans can’t provide.

“You are able to see how neurons within the human brain are working in a real life setting,” says Parvizi.

Changing Faces:  Researchers Manipulate Brain’s Face Region for the First Time

The three patients answered true or false questions that ranged from mathematical calculations to what scientists call episodic memory — such as, I had coffee at breakfast this morning. As with previous studies, the researchers found that a specific group of nerves in the brain was activated when the participants performed calculations. But when the team looked at the videos to correlate what the patients were doing during other periods of spiking activity in this region, they were delighted to find that the participants were discussing quantitative concepts.

One patient, for example, talked on the phone about being given “some more Vicodin” and the region— known as the intraparietal sulcus—sprang into action.  She later mentioned a “ten to fifteen minute seizure,” and again, activity there spiked. Similarly, when the participants referred to more abstract numerical quantities such as ‘many,’ ‘bigger than,’ and ‘some more,’ the nerves also started buzzing with activity.

“This is exciting, and a little scary,” said Henry Greely, who chairs Stanford’s Center for Biomedical Ethics but was not involved with the research, in a statement. “It demonstrates, first, that we can see when someone’s dealing with numbers and, second, that we may conceivably someday be able to manipulate the brain to affect how someone deals with numbers.”

Even more tantalizing is the possibility of “reading” the passive thoughts of patients in comas, those who have experienced brain injury, or are paralyzed and unable to express themselves through speech. “I think it’s very promising,” says John Donaghue, professor of neuroscience at Brown University, commenting on the study.  Donaghue has been working to develop implants to help paralyzed people move again— he demonstrated in several patients that implants in the motor cortex can help them to manipulate robotic arms just by thinking about the action. One woman, paralyzed for fifteen years, used such implants to will a robot arm to allow her to drink coffee independently for the first time since her stroke.

Donaghue says these studies hint that, at least in a crude way, it’s possible to read the mind’s ability to perform certain actions, and then tap into this system to generate specific movements at will. He and his colleagues have shown, for example, that monkeys with such implants can learn to move objects intentionally by thinking about it.  “When the animals realize [they can do it], they get lazy and don’t want to go back to doing it [physically],” he says.

MORE:  Your Brain on Math

But applying this system to read thoughts and language will almost certainly be much more complicated. No one knows how the brain encodes specific concepts, words or numbers; the new research suggests where to look for numerical processing, but doesn’t reveal the content of that data— for example, which specific circuits are responsible for the number two, and which are charged with conveying the ‘greater than’ principle. “The only thing that we can tell is that they were thinking about numbers,” says Parvizi. In other words, they can tell you might be thinking about your winning lottery number— but not what the lucky number actually is.

“What’s going on in your mind right now involves the collective action of unbelievably large numbers of neurons,” says Donaghue, “The only way to truly understand that thought would be to have truly detailed measurements of all of it at once and we don’t the have tools to do that. Reading your email would probably be better.”

That doesn’t mean such neural eavesdropping won’t be possible. But, Parvizi said in a statement, “We’re still in early days with this. If this is a baseball game, we’re not even in the first inning. We just got a ticket to enter the stadium.”

 

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/finally-way-read-minds-150015654.html
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Why Is Miley Cyrus’ Tongue White?

Miley Cyris has an extra pearly white.

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images for Clear Channel

Miley Cyrus’ tongue has appeared on stages, magazine covers, social media feeds, and red carpets. It has even inspired a dialogue between Atlantic Wire writers on its symbolic import (“embarrassing unsexy sign of a girl who is trying too hard” or “brilliant sendup of prepackaged coy femininity that is genius in its grossness?”). As a cultural touchstone, this band of flesh waggles with enough conflicting meanings and interpretations to make a grad student in anthropology salivate—but before we even start that conversation, can we just confirm that Miley’s not dying of rabies?

Her tongue looks white. Like, dusted with inclement weather. Like she was just licking the inside of a goose feather pillow. And while, yes, we know, the world does not need another post about Miley Cyrus, our previous posts have led us to feel genuine concern for her. Dentists who blog have also expressed misgivings. Is there a chance Miley might actually have some kind of health problem?   

“There are a few things that would cause me concern if she walked into my office.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, white tongue is usually “the result of inflammation of the finger-like projections (papillae) on the surface of your tongue. The appearance of a white coating is caused by debris, bacteria, and dead cells getting lodged between the inflamed papillae.”

Luckily, though, the inflammation that leads to white tongue is often “harmless and temporary.” Typical causes include (per the Mayo Clinic) dehydration, dry mouth, excessive alcohol use, fever, and smoking. But there are scarier culprits too. Leukoplakia is a condition that “causes cells in the mouth to grow excessively” and “can develop when your tongue has been irritated,” especially by “tobacco products.” The complaint may be precancerous. Another possible cause is oral thrush, which sounds like an exotic bird but is actually a yeast infection, one that occasionally results from taking steroids or antibiotics. Oral lichen planus, an autoimmune disorder, can sometimes turn the tongue white, as can syphilis.

So what should Miley do? The best person for her to consult is her dentist, who will be able to diagnose her condition and determine whether it’s harmless. I was unable to reach Miley’s dentist (or her agent or manager), but I did manage to float her case by Robert Mantoni, a DDS in the Washington, D.C., area. After poring over some Internet images, Mantoni concluded: “In many of these pictures, the tongue looks normal: pink, moist and healthy. But there are a few that would cause me some concern if she walked into my office. Looking at the white color on the top of the tongue, and knowing her wild lifestyle, I would start thinking alcohol, drugs, or maybe bulimia, since all those things can compromise the immune system and inflame the papillae. Alcohol in particular is such an irritant to the mouth.”

How would he treat it? “Well, the first thing is not to freak out. I’ve seen this many times, much worse, and it’s usually very, very benign. You can get it to resolve with warm salt water rinses and sometimes peroxide cleanses. Or you might just need to switch toothpastes to something blander. I’d recommend she buy a tongue scraper or gently brush her tongue as well. In short, eliminate potential causes and practice more aggressive hygiene. And then come back in two weeks to make sure everything’s cleared up.” (Other dentists agree that she could pay a little more attention to her oral health.)

Sure, but what if it hasn’t cleared up? “That’s when we request a biopsy. I’d be very surprised if that were necessary, though. White anywhere else in the mouth or even on the sides of the tongue would concern me. Not white on top.”

Phew. Good news, Miley. You can go back to “experimenting with the shape of pop stardom” now. Your tongue is probably fine.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/10/why_is_miley_cyrus_tongue_white_dentists_advise.html
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This Musical iPhone App Uses Your Phone's Camera to Remix Tunes

Until now, augmented reality has been mostly used as a way of giving you more information about the world around you, but a new iPhone app uses your surroundings to remix the music you're listening to.

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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/cudBq-QGHL0/this-musical-iphone-app-uses-your-phones-camera-to-rem-1445200256
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One of These Things is Not Like the Other (Balloon Juice)

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Young Mountain Lion Caught on Camera Teasing Its Captured Brother

If you’re a young mountain lion, a fresh deer carcass is probably among the better things you could find in a forest. But eating it could mean you end up spending some time in a cage, getting teased by your sibling, and emerging from the experience wearing a new, blingy techno-collar.

On Sept. 30, this is exactly what happened in the Santa Cruz mountains to a young puma now known as 41M. Around 6:30 p.m., the 84-pound cat ventured into a cage trap set by a group of UC Santa Cruz biologists. Lured by the tantalizing scent of dead deer and the recorded calls of dying animals (so tempting), the 14-month-old male tiptoed into the cage and promptly found himself locked inside with a tasty meal. Not far behind? His sibling, another young cat, who sprang atop the cage and started playing with its littermate inside.

The encounter was caught by a trail camera monitoring the cage trap. Soon after, members of the UCSC team came by to check on the cat in the cage; they then sedated him and attached a tracking collar, making him the 41st animal participant in a long-term study known as the UC Santa Cruz Puma Project.

While the team worked, 41M’s sibling stayed nearby, its eyes gleaming in the dark.

Veronica Yovovich keeps an eye on puma 9M after the team put a collar on him in 2011. Scientists stay with the animals until they wake up. (Nadia Drake)

“We could see the eye shine,” said Veronica Yovovich, a graduate student at UCSC. Yovovich is studying the complex interactions between deer, pumas, humans, and vegetation in the Santa Cruz Mountains — an area once covered by nonstop forests, but which in recent decades has been carved into pieces by concrete highways and buildings.

“This was pretty exciting for us,” Yovovich said. “We’re always really cautious about handling these guys, and we want to make sure that whatever we’re doing is safe for the animal. It’s nice to see that when the door shut, [41M] kind of flinched but then was like, ‘Sweet, there’s a half a deer here, and I’m going to eat it.’”

The UCSC team has been studying the local puma population since 2008, estimated to number between 50 and 100 individuals (pumas are also known as cougars, mountain lions, catamounts, painters, and panthers, depending on what part of the country you’re in). The Project’s goal is to understand how these elusive predators interact with and survive in a landscape that’s increasingly shaped by human activities. They want to know where the animals go, how they navigate through a complex network of open spaces and dense, residential areas, and how their lives unfold differently in the presence of civilization.

Led by wildlife ecologist Chris Wilmers, the team uses a variety of tech-savvy collars — and an army of trail cameras — to follow the pumas as they go about their lives. The collars keep track of where the pumas are, and in some cases what the cats are doing, courtesy of accelerometers included in the hardware. Now, the group is busy tracking 14 animals, a task that involves aerial telemetry flights, remote downloading of data, monitoring the trail cams, and heading off into the woods in search of partially eaten puma-meals, and the pumas themselves.

Without the collars, studying the Santa Cruz mountain cougars would be nearly impossible. Mountain lions are among the most stealthy and practiced predators on the planet, slipping through forests and only being spotted occasionally by humans. “Mountain lions are a secretive creatures — they’re professional hiders. That’s how they make their living,” says team member and field biologist Paul Houghtaling in this video shot by KQED, a local TV station. “So it’s no wonder that people rarely see them. They hide, and they don’t want to be seen.”

‘Mountain lions are secretive creatures — they’re professional hiders.’

The shy, nocturnal mountain lions prowl through moonlit forests and ambush prey. As the sun rises, they hide their leftovers and silently spring into trees or under bushes, waiting for the light of day to recede.

But the team doesn’t only keep a record of the mountain lions’ lives — they also keep track of how the animals die. Since the study started, half of the study animals have died; and about half of those cats were killed by humans after messing with livestock, Yovovich said.

In 2011, I had the chance to follow the team for a day and observe how they track their animals, set traps, and, ultimately, collar a new cat. That cat, called 9M, was a 100-pound 2-year-old when he got his collar; a few months later, after striking out in search of new territory, 9M was dead — shot after he messed with someone’s goats. And last week, as 41M got his collar, a cat called 27M was also shot after eating a pet goat.

Last month, California’s governor Jerry Brown signed bill SB132 into law, which requires that nonlethal procedures be used to remove any mountain lion that’s not an immediate threat to public safety. But that only protects animals who wander too far into cities — not those who stick to the fringes. In the Santa Cruz hills, on the border between the forest and town, goats and other unprotected livestock are a tempting target for wild animals — especially the young ones who are still working on developing the hunting skills that will allow them to survive.

When those pumas attack livestock, owners can apply for depredation permits from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. These permits allow them to shoot problem cats — something that’s totally preventable, as predator-proof enclosures do exist, or can be built, Yovovich said.

And yet, it’s a fate that occurs too commonly in areas where humans and pumas coincide.

Source: http://feeds.wired.com/c/35185/f/661470/s/32565d4e/sc/10/l/0L0Swired0N0Cwiredscience0C20A130C10A0Cmountain0Elion0Esiblings0Eplay0C/story01.htm
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