Men vs. Women. What would you focus on?

       A New study has revealed that men and women do in fact view the world differently. And not just theoretically but they actually focus on different things. The University of Bristol in the United Kingdom conducted a study which asked 26 females and 26 males to veiw multiple image stills from different films. One of the images was of a man waving his hand in the air while standing next to a woman who is waving a little closer to her body. The couple appears to be on a stage waving to some kind of audience ( I believe it is an image from a scene in the movie Love Actually). The results of the study reveal that women explore more of the picture than men do. A lot of the focusing involves eyes and hands, but females also focused on nonfacial areas and often focused on areas slightly below where the males focused. This can be attributed to the westernized idea of direct eye contact being threatening. Women may be associating more of a risk with direct eye contact than males. This could also be a sign of submitting to the males. Eye-tracking technology has been used in many studies to reveal gender-differences in eye movement. This is a heavily studied topic in the feild of Biopsychology. This just means we're one step closer to seeing how the battle of the sexes really works.

Original Article:
Battle of the sexes: How Women and Men see things Differently

Anti-Inflammatory Fungus to Help Treat Cancer

The Tibetan people in the picture above are making thousands of dollars by selling caterpillars that have been infested with fungi. But why would a caterpillar fungus be worth so much?

       These little creatures have anti-inflammatory properties and are being used all over the world for medicinal purposes. Patients who follow the tradition medicinal practices either chew the worm or brew it in a tea and drink it. But this isn't just some folk medicine; studies have been done and posted in the journal RNA. A chemical from this fungus called cordycepin is an anti-inflammatory. An inflammatory response is the bodies way of protecting itself, but in cases like with asthma the inflammation happens too quickly and severely. But cordycepin inhibits the inflammation process. Not only does it just stop the swelling, but it stops the swelling at a genetic cellular level.

       It will be a while for any drug to come out officially and doctors are not recommending patients to ingest this fungus due to lack of knowledge about dosages and overdosing. Cornelia H. De Moor, the scientist of the study, advises people who are interested in this fungal anti-inflammatory to wait for medicine. With luck this fungus could lead to a new drug that can help battle cancer, asthma, arthritis, and cardiovascular disease.

 

National Geographic article on this topic:

Caterpillar Fungus Has Anti-Inflammatory Properties