The stories that bind us

The last few years have seen stunning breakthroughs in knowledge about how to make families work more effectively. I've tried to uncover that information, meeting families, scholars and experts. After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative.

I first heard this idea from Marshall Duke, a psychologist at Emory University. In the mid-1990 s, Dr Duke was asked to help explore myth and ritual in American families. Around that time, Dr Duke's wife, Sara, a psychologist who works with children with learning disabilities, noticed something about her students.

"The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges ," she said.

Her husband was intrigued, and along with a colleague, Robyn Fivush, set out to test her hypothesis . They developed a measure called the "Do You Know?" scale that asked children to answer 20 questions. Examples included : Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met?

Dr Duke and Dr Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001. They then compared the children's results to psychological tests the children had taken, and reached an overwhelming conclusion. The more children knew about their family's history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned.

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The naked man does not dance

On a recent Saturday, Amy Albright was celebrating her bachelorette party on West 14th Street. A table was filled with miniature cupcakes and glasses of pink Champagne. Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walkin' played on the stereo. A shirtless waiter took coats. The guests, mostly in their 30s, sat down, waiting for the main attraction: a nude male model. But not a stripper. A subject, to draw.

"Is this a new thing?" asked Albright , who is 33 and worked at Christie's until recently. There was much nervous laughter all around; each guest was wearing an apron and sitting in front of an easel. "Just as long as I don't have to get naked, too," Albright said.

"Girls want to do something a little cheeky," said Samara Hodgson , an owner with Fleur Childs of the Artful Bachelorette, the year-old company that organised the event (and also does bachelor parties, birthdays and assorted get-togethers centring on live nude figure drawing, averaging one party weekly).

Both Hodgson, 29, and Childs, 30, are from Australia, where lifedrawing "hen parties," as they are called, are popular and considered a tasteful alternative to raucous Chippendales-type affairs. "It's common to bring your mum or aunt or grandma," Childs said. "It's something to talk about and bond with for the day. You'll learn a bit and definitely laugh a lot."

Their sessions are two hours and cost $85 a guest, which includes Champagne, snacks, a teacher, a waiter, a model and a group photo shoot. Rules prohibit guests from touching the model and photographing him while he's naked.

Jess Cohen, 28, hired the Artful Bachelorette for her best friend's bachelorette party. The guests, who were flying in to New York from around the globe, ranged in age from 26 to 75. She made the choice after dismissing options at both sides of the spectrum of decorum, like strip clubs and afternoon tea. "This was the perfect balance of fun, sexiness and creativity," said Cohen, a producer of film and video based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Cara Eisenpress, a food writer in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, is another satisfied customer. "I was very resistant to a stripper, and I don't love to be the centre of attention. I had done a bunch of drawing in high school and college. It was nice to be part of the audience, sitting there with paper and charcoal. It was down to earth with some raciness."

Back at Albright's party, it was time to take out pencils. "Without further ado, this is the lovely Kurt," said Childs, introducing the model, Kurt McVey, 28, a former lacrosse player with styled hair and chiselled features. Albright was asked to remove McVey's towel and she did as she was told, though she looked terrified.

Childs, who has a fine arts degree from the University of New South Wales, called out instructions : "Stick figures are fine at first. No crossing anything out. No erasers. The more you drink, the better you draw." She guided the group through six 60-second poses, among them facing front, facing the wall, one leg on a stool and archer pose. A final word of advice: "Don't forget to draw the male member! It's very important."

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Teenage depression linked to cardiac risk factors

WASHINGTON: A new study suggests that depression suffered during teens may predispose people to higher cardiac risk factors as adults.

People who were depressed as teenagers are far more likely than their peers to be obese, smoke cigarettes and lead sedentary lives, even if they no longer suffer from depression, say researchers.

The study conducted by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Pittsburgh suggests that depression, even in children, can increase the risk of heart problems later in life, reports Science Daily.

"Part of the reason this is so worrisome is that a number of recent studies have shown that when adolescents have these cardiac risk factors, they're much more likely to develop heart disease as adults and even to have a shorter lifespan," says lead author Robert M. Carney, professor of psychiatry at the Washington University.

"Active smokers as adolescents are twice as likely to die by the age of 55 than non-smokers, and we see similar risks with obesity, so finding this link between childhood depression and these risk factors suggests that we need to very closely monitor young people who have been depressed."

Researchers have known for years that adults with depression are likely to have heart attacks and other cardiac problems. But it hasn't been clear when risk factors for heart disease such as smoking, obesity and sedentary lifestyle join forces with depression to increase the risk for heart problems.

"We know that depression in adults is associated with heart disease and a higher risk of dying from a heart attack or having serious complications," Carney says.

"What we didn't know is at what stage of life we would begin to see evidence of this association between depression and these cardiac risk factors."

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Olive oil helps you feel full

BERLIN, Olive oil leads to satiety, shows a study that points out the mechanism behind it.

Reduced-fat food products are gaining popularity. More and more people are choosing "light" products in an attempt to lose weight, or at least in the hope that they would not gain pounds.

But whether these products are effective or not is a matter of dispute: while it is true that they contain fewer calories, people tend to overcompensate by eating more if they do not feel full.

Now a study has shown how "natural" oils and fats regulate the sensation of feeling full after eating, with olive oil leading the way.

So what makes this oil so effective?

Work groups at Germany's Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) under professor Peter Schieberle and at the University of Vienna under professor Veronika Somoza studied four different edible fats and oils -- lard, butterfat, rapeseed oil and olive oil.

Over a period of three months, the study participants ate 500 gm of low-fat yoghurt enriched with one of the four fats or oils every day -- as a supplement to their normal diet, reports Science Daily.

"Olive oil had the biggest satiety effect," said Schieberle.

"The olive oil group showed a higher concentration of the satiety hormone serotonin in their blood. Subjectively speaking, these participants also reported that they found the olive oil yoghurt very filling," he added.

During the study period, no member of this group recorded an increase in their body fat percentage or their weight.

"Our findings show that aroma is capable of regulating satiety," Schieberle said. "We hope that this work will pave the way for the development of more effective reduced-fat food products that are nonetheless satiating," he said.

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3 astronauts return to earth after 144-day mission to International Space Station

MOSCOW: A Soyuz space capsule carrying an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts landed on Saturday morning on the foggy steppes of Kazakhstan, safely returning the three men to earth after a 144-day mission to the International Space Station.

Nasa's Kevin Ford and Russians Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin had been scheduled to return on Friday, but the landing was postponed by a day because of bad weather.

Live footage on Nasa TV showed all three men smiling as they were helped out of the capsule and into reclining chairs to begin their acclimatization to Earth's gravity after nearly five months in space.

A Nasa TV commentator said only two of 12 search and rescue helicopters were allowed to land at the touchdown site because of heavy clouds and fog. So instead of being placed in an inflatable medical tent for checks, the astronauts were taken fairly quickly to one of the helicopters. The temperature at the time was well below freezing.

The crew was then flown to Kostanai, the staging site in Kazakhstan, where they posed for more photographs. Ford put on a traditional felt Kazakh hat and draped a matching coat over his flight suit, while holding up a matryoshka nesting doll of himself - all souvenirs of the mission that began and ended in the Central Asian country.

The three men blasted off on Oct. 23 from the Baikonur cosmodrome, which Russia leases from Kazakhstan.

Vladimir Popovkin, the head of the Russian space agency, described the crew as "giving off good vibes, that they are a united and friendly team," the Interfax news agency reported.

Space officials said Ford would be flown to Houston, Texas, while the Russians would return to the space training facility outside Moscow.

Their return voyage to earth began with the Russian-made capsule undocking from the space station at 5:43am local time (1143gmt Friday) and beginning its slow drift away. The craft made a "flawless entry" back into the earth's atmosphere, descended through heavy cloud cover and landed perfectly in an upright position at around 9:10am (0310gmt), the Nasa commentator said.

Three other astronauts - from Russia, the US and Canada - remain at the space station. The next three-man crew - two Russians and an American - is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome on March 29.

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Cern physicists say they have found 'God particle'

(The European Organization…)

GENEVA: Physicists said on Thursday they are now confident they have discovered a crucial subatomic particle known as a Higgs boson, a major discovery that will go a long ways toward helping them explain why the universe is the way it is.

They made the statement following study of the data gathered last year from the world's largest atom-smasher, which lies beneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said that what they found last year was, indeed, a version of what is popularly referred to as the "God particle."

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ALMA arrives with discovery of monster starburst galaxies at the edge of time

Subodh Varma, TNN Mar 14, 2013, 05.22PM IST

(ALMA, an international…)

NEW DELHI: ALMA has arrived with a bang! Scientists at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an observatory located in one of the coldest, driest places on earth, have found a monster starburst galaxy with the brightness of 40 trillion Suns. It is located at an unimaginable distance - light seen by ALMA started from the galaxy some 12.7 billion years ago when the Universe was just a billion years old. Scientists found that it was giving birth to new stars at a mind boggling rate of 1000 every year. Our galaxy, the Milky Way gives birth to one star every year.

Actually ALMA found a whole zoo of galaxies, some 18 of them, all of them from the early turbulent period of the Universe when it was one to three billion years old. Usually, star formation from gigantic swirling clouds of dust does not take place at such a furious pace as in these ancient galaxies.

The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today. The international team of researchers first discovered these distant starburst galaxies with the National Science Foundation's 10-meter South Pole Telescope. Though dim in visible light, they were glowing brightly in millimeter wavelength light, a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that the new ALMA telescope was designed to explore.

Using only 16 of ALMA's eventual full complement of 66 antennas, the researchers were able to precisely determine the distance to 18 of these galaxies, revealing that they were among the most distant starburst galaxies ever detected. These results were surprising because very few similar galaxies had previously been discovered at similar distances, and it wasn't clear how galaxies that early in the history of the Universe could produce stars at such a prodigious rate.

The results, published in a set of papers to appear in the journal Nature and in the Astrophysical Journal, will help astronomers better understand when and how the earliest massive galaxies formed. The most intense bursts of star birth are thought to have occurred in the early Universe in massive, bright galaxies. These starburst galaxies converted vast reservoirs of gas and dust into new stars at a furious pace - many thousands of times faster than stately spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way.

"The more distant the galaxy, the further back in time one is looking, so by measuring their distances we can piece together a timeline of how vigorously the Universe was making new stars at different stages of its 13.7 billion-year history," said Joaquin Vieira of Caltech who led the team and is lead author of the Nature paper, as reported in a statement by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the US.

Intriguingly, emission from water molecules was detected in one of these record-breakers, making it the most distant detection of water in the Universe published to date.

"ALMA's sensitivity and wide wavelength range mean we could make our measurements in just a few minutes per galaxy - about one hundred times faster than before," said Axel Weiss of the Max-Planck-Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, Germany, who led the work to measure the distances to the galaxies, the NRAO statement said. "Previously, a measurement like this would be a laborious process of combining data from both visible-light and radio telescopes."

ALMA was able to measure all this because of gravitational lensing, in which the light from a distant galaxy is distorted and magnified by the gravitational force of a nearer foreground galaxy. Analysis of this gravitational distortion reveals that some of the distant star-forming galaxies are as bright as 40 trillion Suns, and that gravitational lensing has magnified this light by up to 22 times.

ALMA, an international astronomy facility, located in the Atacama desert where there is minimal interference from light and dust. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).

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Europe, Russia to launch mission to bring back Martian dirt

MOSCOW: Europe and Russia signed a deal on Thursday for a joint Mars mission to bring back samples of dirt they hope will answer the mystery of whether there is life beyond Earth.

Europe had hoped to work with Nasa on the two-spacecraft mission but turned to the Russians after the U.S. agency pulled out due to budget shortfalls and a change in direction.

The announcement comes amid heightened excitement over the search for life on the planet most like Earth after scientists said analysis from Nasa's own mission rover, Curiosity, showed Mars had the right ingredients for life.

Nasa wants to follow up with a duplicate rover in 2020 and bring samples home for study, but the Russian and European team hope to launch its probes in 2016 and 2018 - setting up the makings of a new post-Cold War space race for one of science's biggest prizes.

"Establishing whether life ever existed on Mars is one of the outstanding scientific questions of our time and the highest scientific priority of the ExoMars programme," the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a statement.

Moscow will provide the rockets to launch the Exobiology on Mars, or ExoMars, mission. Russian Space Agency Roskosmos will also design the descent module and surface platform for the second leg of the venture.

Despite describing the ExoMars project as the "Holy Grail of Mars exploration", Nasa left the $1.3 billion project in February 2012, citing a budget crunch and a change in focus.

Europe then turned to Russia for the launch vehicle. The two space agencies agreed to cooperate together last April, but talks to work out the details dragged out for nearly a year.

"This event was a long time in the making and took a great deal collaboration," Roskosmos head Vladimir Popovkin after signing the deal with ESA Director Jean-Jacques Dordain in Paris.

Russia's involvement in the ambitious mission could boost the status of its once-pioneering space agency after a litany of costly and embarrassing failures.

The delays in agreeing the mission hinged on the extent of Russia's participation, according to Russian space experts who said Moscow had seemed to have achieved its goal of full partnership.

"The agreement implies that Russian scientist and engineers will become full-fledged participants in all the international scientific and technical groups established by the parties to the project," Roskosmos said in a statement.

What was to be Russia's first deep space mission in more than two decades - the Phobos-Grunt mission to scoop up soil samples from Mars - was among five botched launches that hurt Moscow reputation as a reliable launch partner.

European governments have so far committed 850 million euros for the mission.

The cap for the project had been set at 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion), but delays and changes to the scientific aspects of the mission are expected to drive up the price tag.

Although Nasa pulled out, the US space agency will still contribute radio equipment and telecom support.

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'Sleeping pills could improve your memory'

WASHINGTON: Taking sleeping pills could help a person improve his memory, a controversial new study has claimed.

Researchers have confirmed the mechanism that enables the brain to consolidate memory and found that a commonly prescribed sleep aid enhances the process.

The discovery could lead to new sleep therapies that will improve memory for ageing adults and those with dementia, Alzheimer's and schizophrenia.

Earlier research found a correlation between sleep spindles - bursts of brain activity that last for a second or less during a specific stage of sleep - and consolidation of memories that depend on the hippocampus.

The hippocampus, part of the cerebral cortex, is important in the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory, and spatial navigation. The hippocampus is one of the first regions of the brain damaged by Alzheimer's.

Sara C Mednick from the University of California Riverside and her team demonstrated, for the first time, the critical role that sleep spindles play in consolidating memory in the hippocampus, and they showed that pharmaceuticals could significantly improve that process, far more than sleep alone.

"We found that a very common sleep drug can be used to increase verbal memory," said Mednick, the lead author of the study.

"This is the first study to show you can manipulate sleep to improve memory. It suggests sleep drugs could be a powerful tool to tailor sleep to particular memory disorders," Mednick said in a statement.

A total of 49 men and women between the ages of 18 and 39 who were normal sleepers were given varying doses of zolpidem (Ambien) or sodium oxybate (Xyrem), and a placebo, allowing several days between doses to allow the pharmaceuticals to leave their bodies.

Researchers monitored their sleep, measured sleepiness and mood after napping, and used several tests to evaluate their memory.

They found that zolpidem significantly increased the density of sleep spindles and improved verbal memory consolidation.

"(P)harmacologically enhancing sleep spindles in healthy adults produces exceptional memory performance beyond that seen with sleep alone or sleep with the comparison drug (sodium oxybate)," the researchers said.

Individuals with Alzheimer's, dementia and schizophrenia also experience decreases in sleep spindles, according to the study published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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Cern physicists say they have found 'God particle'

GENEVA: Physicists said on Thursday they are now confident they have discovered a crucial subatomic particle known as a Higgs boson, a major discovery that will go a long ways toward helping them explain why the universe is the way it is.

They made the statement following study of the data gathered last year from the world's largest atom-smasher, which lies beneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said that what they found last year was, indeed, a version of what is popularly referred to as the "God particle."

Joe Incandela, who heads one of the two main teams at CERN that each involve several thousand scientists, said in a statement that "it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is.''

The long-theorized subatomic particle would explain why matter has mass and has been considered a missing cornerstone of physics.

Last July, scientists with the world's largest atom-smasher announced finding a particle they described as Higgs-like.

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