Aine Brady, T.D., Minister for Older People, officially launched the Pilot Project on Elder Mediation as part of the Elder Mediation World Summit and Symposium.

The Pilot Project is a joint collaboration initiative between Mediation Northside and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland. The aim of the project is provide an elder mediation service for older people in Dublin, including those with a cognitive impairment.

Speaking at the launch the Minister said “Older people and particularly those with a cognitive impairment, may often feel excluded from the decision making process, believing that decisions are made for them, rather than with them. Participation is a central component of positive ageing, and it is absolutely right that older people should contribute and influence decision-making in the areas that concern them. The pilot project will facilitate this and aims to empower all participants, improve communication and reduce stress associated with family conflict”.

Source
Department of Health and Children

OSA: The Sleep Disorder that’s Deadly for Your Heart If you’re a loud snorer who doesn’t feel rested enough during the day, you may be unwittingly putting your heart at risk. That’s because you could have untreated Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), a disorder directly linked to several cardiovascular syndromes that cause premature death. OSA, in which the upper airway becomes blocked repeatedly during sleep, is a condition that affects 24% of men and 8% of women.

Over the past 10 years, several studies have linked OSA to high blood pressure. Patients who require three or more medications to control hypertension have an 80% chance of having OSA. Also, compared to the general population the prevalence of OSA is significantly higher among patients with chronic heart failure (50% higher), a trial fibrillation (50% higher) and coronary artery disease (40% higher). For patients with these heart conditions, a sleep study is crucial; if their OSA goes undiagnosed and untreated, they will have a doubled risk for death during the next 5 years.

Given OSA’s direct connection to the heart, it’s important for all patients that it be treated as soon as possible. However, it’s estimated that between 80% and 90% of people with OSA have not yet been diagnosed. Individuals who have one or more of these symptoms should talk with their doctors about a sleep study:

– Cessation of breathing during sleep, and then waking up with a gasp (most often observed by another)

– Loud, irregular snoring

– Restless sleep with frequent (and possibly unnoticed) awakening

– Morning headache, dry mouth and/or sore throat

– Daytime sleepiness

– Irritability and/or impaired concentration

– High blood pressure

If you need an expert to comment on the connection between OSA and heart health, LifeBridge Health’s expert physicians in sleep medicine are available for media interviews.

The Heart Disease Diabetes Connection

Living with diabetes can be challenging by itself. However, if people with type 2 diabetes don’t manage their conditions, they could develop heart disease.

In fact, the numbers are frightening. Heart disease and strokes are the number one killers of people with type 2 diabetes. Both are responsible for the about 65 percent of the deaths of people with diabetes. That’s why it’s so important to understand the connection and to learn to use prevention methods.

Cardiologists and endocrinologists from Sinai Hospital of Baltimore and Northwest Hospital in Randallstown, Maryland say the link makes sense.

Diabetes happens when there is a breakdown in the way our bodies turn food into fat and energy. Most of the food we ingest is turned into glucose, also called blood sugar. Glucose is the primary fuel for our bodies. However, over time, if our blood glucose is too high, it can harm our blood vessels and nerves. That’s because both are an important part of our cardiovascular systems.

However, the news is not doom and gloom. Each person has the power to control many factors associated with both diabetes and heart disease through education and determination.

It’s no surprise that eating healthy is a major factor in delaying or preventing these two health challenges. However, just as important is setting nutritional goals that each person is able to reach and then keep. It’s not question of going on a diet or cutting out certain foods if that will end in failure. The changes need to be a lifestyle change. The key is to work with a dietician and other heart and diabetes experts to put together a personal plan that gives each individual the best chance of succeeding.

It’s also not shocking that exercise is another crucial component in the fight against both heart disease and diabetes. Again, what’s significant here is creating a routine that can be followed. Choosing an effective workout that keeps a person motivated is necessary to make sure a person incorporates it into daily life. There are as many ways to become, and stay, active as there are hobbies that people enjoy.

Taking prescribed medication, not smoking and support from family members can also make all of the difference for people with heart disease and diabetes.

When It Comes to Cardiac Rehab, More Is More

For people who have had a heart attack or certain other heart condition, participating in an outpatient cardiac rehabilitation program can be key to ensuring that they don’t have another heart event.

A new study published in the 5/12 January 2010 issue of Circulation demonstrates that the more sessions of cardiac rehabilitation a heart patient participated in, the more his or her risk for heart attack and sudden death was reduced. For example, people who attended 36 sessions of cardiac rehab had over the next four years:

– an 18 percent lower risk of death compared to those who attended 24 sessions

– a 29 percent lower risk of death than those who attended just 12 sessions, and

– a 58 percent lower risk of death than those who attended only 1 session.

Cardiac rehab gives patients a customized exercise plan and lifestyle modification coaching to help get their hearts into shape. Unfortunately, only 18 percent of cardiac rehab patients complete all 36 sessions, the number reimbursed by Medicare.

If you need an expert to comment on the latest cardiac rehabilitation findings published in Circulation, the cardiologist and medical director for LifeBridge Health’s cardiac rehabilitation program is available for media interviews.

Lifebridge Health Employees Will “Go Red” to Fight Heart Disease

You’re enjoying a sunny day, playing with your kids. Suddenly, you’re short of breath, you have back pain and you’re sick to your stomach.

What’s happening? According to the Heart Center at Sinai, you could be having a heart attack. Surprisingly, especially with women, intense chest pain is not always an indicator of an attack.

In an effort to help raise awareness and educate women about this danger, LifeBridge Health is joining with the American Heart Association and millions of people around the country for national Go Red Day.

Employees at Sinai Hospital, Northwest Hospital, Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital, Courtland Gardens Nursing & Rehabilitation Center are being encouraged to dress in red on February 5, 2010. The effort is intended to start discussions about what heart disease is, what the symptoms are and how it can be prevented.

The employee activities committee at each LifeBridge Health center is spearheading the efforts. In addition later in the month, Sinai Hospital will donate proceeds from a candy sale from its Employee Appreciation Day to the Go Red campaign. The reasoning… women should be conscious about their hearts all year, not just for one day.

Cardiovascular disease is often thought of as a “man’s disease.” However, it is the number one killer of women, more than all cancers together.

Some heart attacks are sudden and intense, but most start slowly, with mild pain or pressure that can disappear and return. The other warning signs can include chest pain; discomfort in the arm, back, neck or jaw; shortness of breath; and nausea. Trouble breathing may happen with or without chest discomfort.

LifeBridge Health is one of the largest and most comprehensive providers of health services in northwest Baltimore.

Source: LifeBridge Health

Behavioral scientist and tobacco-cessation expert, Alexander V. Prokhorov, M.D., Ph.D., at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is the recipient of the 2011 American Society of Preventive Oncology (ASPO) Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award for Excellence in Tobacco Research.

“I’m humbled by such a prestigious award,” said Prokhorov, known for his dedication, innovative programs and collaboration with health care professionals, public health advocates and scientists across the nation. “I was particularly impressed that this year’s award is being given to someone who’s trying to impact younger generations through education and skill building to resist tobacco pressures so we can raise a nonsmoking generation of Americans.”

The award created in memory of Joseph W. Cullen, Ph.D., former coordinator of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Smoking Tobacco and Cancer Programs and pioneer of one of the largest tobacco intervention programs in the world, recognizes distinguished leaders in tobacco control, research, prevention and program development. The annual award honors those with programs that broadly affect public health through policy and innovative initiatives.

Colleagues admire Prokhorov’s leadership as director of the Tobacco Outreach Education Program (TOEP) at MD Anderson, his novel research focused on tobacco prevention and cessation programs for teens and young adults, in educating health professionals and the public about tobacco hazards.

“Everyone at MD Anderson recognizes that Alex is a visionary and highly accomplished tobacco researcher with a deep passion and enduring commitment to seeing his science translated into the community for public benefit,” said Ernest T. Hawk, M.D., vice president and head of Division of Cancer Prevention & Population Sciences at MD Anderson.

Over the past two decades, Prokhorov has tailored his research to focus on innovative tobacco prevention and cessation programs for high-risk teens and young adults. Most notable is the tobacco prevention and cessation video game, Escape with Your Life geared towards at-risk youth. Another interactive-multimedia website, ASPIRE (A Smoking Prevention Interactive Experience) has educated thousands of teens across the nation through partnerships with schools, organizations and other cancer institutes. A Spanish curriculum-based ASPIRE site geared at reaching Hispanic youth will soon launch.

Prokhorov is director of e-Health Technology, a program funded by the Duncan Family Institute for Cancer Prevention and Risk Assessment at MD Anderson that works with scientists to integrate technology into research projects that help people adopt healthier lifestyles.

“His work in the Tobacco Outreach and Education Program, the ASPIRE program and the Duncan Family Institute’s e-Health core are particularly laudable and make an important difference in the lives of countless Americans every day,” said Hawk.

Prokhorov’s extensive research expertise has provided the opportunity to branch out over the years with programs such as Project TALK (Teens and Young Adults Acquiring Lung Cancer Knowledge) and most recently Project COMBAT, an interactive multi-media video game tailored to help soldiers avoid or stop tobacco use.

He also serves as chair of ASPO’s Tobacco Special Interest Group, and is the second researcher from the institution honored with this award, which was established more than 19 years ago. ASPO’s first recipient, Ellen R.Gritz, Ph.D, is professor and chair of the Department of Behavioral Science at MD Anderson.

Source: University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center

National health authorities have reported the first cases of yellow fever in Paraguay. In the past two months, the number of cases reported by neighboring Brazilian health authorities has more than quadrupled, and deaths have more than doubled 2007 annual figures to 13 – though local media suggests the number of deaths may be as high as 16.

The risk of yellow fever is growing in South America, threatening the return of devastating epidemics that traumatized vast populations of the Americas during the first half of the 20th century. According to local media, the resurgence is causing panic among urban populations of Paraguay, which have mobilized demonstrations and demanded to be vaccinated against the disease.

Yellow fever is a viral disease transmitted by Aedes and Haemagogus mosquitoes. Although an effective vaccine has existed for 60 years, there is no cure for the disease. The World Health Organization estimates that there are 200,000 cases of yellow fever each year and 30,000 deaths.

Mass vaccinations are now underway in Paraguay and Brazil. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for the vaccination program to move quickly enough to prevent additional infections and deaths. Though the outbreaks in Paraguay and Brazil have caused relatively few deaths, there is still cause for concern.

If the outbreaks spread beyond their present endemic zone to large urban population centers lacking sufficient vaccination coverage, the threats could rise exponentially, endangering the lives of thousands more people.

Additionally, history has shown vaccinations alone are insufficient to prevent outbreaks of this mosquito-borne disease. Improved vector control (mosquito control) is urgently needed along with increased surveillance. Vector control programs succeeded at eradicating Aedes aegypti, the urban vector of yellow fever, from most of South America throughout the 1950s, 60s, and much of the 70s. These programs have since lapsed, allowing Aedes aegypti populations to re-invade and proliferate. These mosquitoes also brought dengue fever – and the growing risk of urban yellow fever.

“Vector control programs that eradicated the yellow fever mosquito from most of the Americas were dismantled largely due to anti-insecticides campaigns waged by environmentalist groups,” said Dr. Donald Roberts, Professor Emeritus of Tropical Medicine at the Uniformed Services University for the Health Sciences. “The ruinous outbreaks of dengue fever and the growing risk of urban yellow fever in South America is a clear example of the harm these campaigns have caused by not considering the risks of vector-borne diseases.”

There are two types of yellow fever found in South America: sylvatic and urban. Sylvatic yellow fever, also known as jungle yellow fever, occurs in tropical forests and is spread among monkeys and mosquitoes. Humans become infected when they enter forested areas and are bitten by infected mosquitoes. Urban yellow fever occurs in urban areas and is spread among humans.

“As with malaria, the yellow fever outbreaks highlight the urgent need for carefully controlled insecticide spraying programs,” said Richard Tren, Director of Africa Fighting Malaria, a health advocacy group based in South Africa and Washington, D.C. “These programs should have been strengthened to sustain progress. Decades of anti-insecticides pressure culminated in 1997 when the World Health Assembly passed a resolution to reduce the use of insecticides in disease control. The resurgence of yellow fever is an unfortunate consequence of that resolution.”

“The pressure to replace insecticides with politically-correct approaches to disease control, such as environmental management for mosquito elimination, has left populations at great risk of terrible diseases. Anti-insecticide advocacy not only eliminated effective disease prevention programs, it also eliminated investments to find new insecticides,” said Dr. Roberts. “We are relying on old tools and the cast offs of the agricultural sector. It is time to set aside entrenched anti-insecticide ideology that dominates the decisions of funding agencies. We need new appropriations to rebuild U.S. expertise in discovery of new insecticides. This includes research and development of new spatial repellents that function, as DDT functions, by keeping mosquitoes out of houses and possibly away from sites where they lay eggs.”

More information on yellow fever is available at the websites of the World Health Organization (who.int) and the Pan American Health Organization (paho)

Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM) is a non-profit health advocacy group founded in 2000 and based in South Africa and the United States. Our mission is to make malaria control more transparent, responsive and effective. We conduct research into the social and economic aspects of malaria and raise the profile of the disease and the issues surrounding its control in the local and international media. AFM strives to hold public institutions accountable for funding and implementing effective, integrated and country-driven malaria control policies and to promote successful private sector initiatives to control the disease.

Because of the nature of our work, we do not accept funding from governments, insecticide manufacturers or the pharmaceutical industry. A list of our funders is available on our website at fightingmalaria.

Bats, birds, box turtles, humans and many other animals share at least one thing in common: They sleep. Humans, in fact, spend roughly one-third of their lives asleep, but sleep researchers still don’t know why.

According to the journal Science, the function of sleep is one of the 125 greatest unsolved mysteries in science. Theories range from brain “maintenance” – including memory consolidation and pruning – to reversing damage from oxidative stress suffered while awake, to promoting longevity. None of these theories are well established, and many are mutually exclusive.

Now, a new analysis by Jerome Siegel, UCLA professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Sleep Research at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the Sepulveda Veterans Affairs Medical Center, has concluded that sleep’s primary function is to increase animals’ efficiency and minimize their risk by regulating the duration and timing of their behavior.

The research appears in the current online edition of the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

“Sleep has normally been viewed as something negative for survival because sleeping animals may be vulnerable to predation and they can’t perform the behaviors that ensure survival,” Siegel said. These behaviors include eating, procreating, caring for family members, monitoring the environment for danger and scouting for prey.

“So it’s been thought that sleep must serve some as-yet unidentified physiological or neural function that can’t be accomplished when animals are awake,” he said.

Siegel’s lab conducted a new survey of the sleep times of a broad range of animals, examining everything from the platypus and the walrus to the echidna, a small, burrowing, egg-laying mammal covered in spines. The researchers concluded that sleep itself is highly adaptive, much like the inactive states seen in a wide range of species, starting with plants and simple microorganisms; these species have dormant states – as opposed to sleep – even though in many cases they do not have nervous systems. That challenges the idea that sleep is for the brain, said Siegel.

“We see sleep as lying on a continuum that ranges from these dormant states like torpor and hibernation, on to periods of continuous activity without any sleep, such as during migration, where birds can fly for days on end without stopping,” he said.

Hibernation is one example of an activity that regulates behavior for survival. A small animal, Siegel noted, can’t migrate to a warmer climate in winter. So it hibernates, effectively cutting its energy consumption and thus its need for food, remaining secure from predators by burrowing underground.

Sleep duration, then, is determined in each species by the time requirements of eating, the cost-benefit relations between activity and risk, migration needs, care of young, and other factors. However, unlike hibernation and torpor, Siegel said, sleep is rapidly reversible – that is, animals can wake up quickly, a unique mammalian adaptation that allows for a relatively quick response to sensory signals.

Humans fit into this analysis as well. What is most remarkable about sleep, according to Siegel, is not the unresponsiveness or vulnerability it creates but rather that ability to reduce body and brain metabolism while still allowing that high level of responsiveness to the environment.

“The often cited example is that of a parent arousing at a baby’s whimper but sleeping through a thunderstorm,” he said. “That dramatizes the ability of the sleeping human brain to continuously process sensory signals and trigger complete awakening to significant stimuli within a few hundred milliseconds.”

In humans, the brain constitutes, on average, just 2 percent of total body weight but consumes 20 percent of the energy used during quiet waking, so these savings have considerable adaptive significance. Besides conserving energy, sleep invokes survival benefits for humans too – “for example,” said Siegel, “a reduced risk of injury, reduced resource consumption and, from an evolutionary standpoint, reduced risk of detection by predators.”

“This Darwinian perspective can explain age-related changes in human sleep patterns as well,” he said. “We sleep more deeply when we are young, because we have a high metabolic rate that is greatly reduced during sleep, but also because there are people to protect us. Our sleep patterns change when we are older, though, because that metabolic rate reduces and we are now the ones doing the alerting and protecting from dangers.”

The Center for Sleep Research is part of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, an interdisciplinary research and education institute devoted to the understanding of complex human behavior, including the genetic, biological, behavioral and sociocultural underpinnings of normal behavior, and the causes and consequences of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Source:
Mark Wheeler

University of California – Los Angeles

Author Diane Ackerman’s world fell apart when her novelist husband, Paul West, had a stroke leaving him with aphasia, which meant he was unable to speak. To coincide with Stroke Awareness Day, Diane has documented their stroke journey in a new book – One Hundred Names for Love.

Paul had a minor stroke ten years ago, so Diane knew immediately that Paul was having another more serious one as she recognised the signs. The stroke left Paul only able to utter a single syllable, “mem”. Paul couldn’t understand other people or form sentences and as a gifted writer, having published 51 books, this was very frustrating.

Diane said, “In that moment, Paul moved to a land of foreigners, whose language he couldn’t speak, and who couldn’t understand him.”

Diane was determined that she would help Paul get back to a full life after his stroke and that he would write again. She realised that despite not being able to use simple vocabulary, Paul had retained some sophisticated words. Diane worked out a language programme especially for Paul to help him use the words he could say as substitutes for others.

It was a long journey, but the couple’s perseverance has paid off. Paul’s speech keeps improving and he has written three novels since his stroke.

Elspeth McAusland, spokesperson for The Stroke Association said, “Communication problems are one of the most common effects of stroke and happen when the parts of the brain responsible for language are damaged. Losing the ability to speak or understand is frightening and frustrating and happens to about a third of people who have a stroke.”

To read more about Paul’s experience of stroke, please visit The Stroke Association’s ‘My Stroke Victory’ page.

To find more about Diane’s book, One Hundred Names for Love, please visit here.

Notes

It is estimated that 150,000 people in the UK have a stroke each year.

Although it is a long and arduous journey, with support and encouragement, enjoying life after stroke is possible.

40 per cent of all strokes could be prevented through simple lifestyle changes such as healthy eating, regular blood pressure checks, stopping smoking and cutting your alcohol intake.

Stroke has a greater disability impact than any other chronic disease. At least 450,000 people are severely disabled as a result of stroke in England.

A stroke can happen to any one at any time. Around a quarter of strokes happen to those aged under 65.

A stroke is a brain attack which causes brain damage. A stroke can be diagnosed by using FAST – Facial weakness, Arm weakness, Speech problems, Time to call 999. If any of these symptoms are present call an ambulance straight away.

Source:

The Stroke Association

Andrew Speaker, the Atlantan lawyer who travelled between Europe and the US while infected with a resistant form of TB that is hard to treat, has been
discharged from hospital following a successful operation to remove an infected part of his lung. He flew back to Georgia after being discharged from the
National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver at 6 am on Thursday morning.

Speaker underwent surgery at the University of Colorado Hospital at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colorado, and then returned to the National Jewish
in Denver to continue in-patient treatment for multi drug resistant tuberculosis.

Doctors at the National Jewish said Speaker is not completely cured yet, but the surgery and antibiotic treatment have removed any traces of infected tissue, and
he is no longer contagious.

Director of the Adult Infectious Disease Care Unit at National Jewish, Dr Gwen Huitt told the press:

“Treatment for Mr. Speaker went very well, and we were able to release him more quickly than we originally anticipated.”

“Although we believe there are still a few tuberculosis bacteria in his lungs, ongoing antibiotic therapy should kill those. We expect him to return to a
full and active life,” she added.

Speaker will be on antibiotics for another two years, and there will be no further restrictions on his movements, except that health officials will be
making sure he takes his medication every day.

“I feel great,” Speaker said in a cellphone interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He is well aware of the publicity that surrounds him and said he wonders if “Will people freak out with their kids” when they see him at the grocery store.
“Unfortunately, the way the story has been told and the way CDC handled things, that’s how people were made to feel,” he said in the interview.

He could have flown back to Georgia by commercial airline, because he is no longer contagious, but given the extraordinary publicity surrounding his case,
everyone involved, including Speaker himself, agreed it would be better for him to fly back by air ambulance and avoid undue public alarm.

Speaker and his family were met by his parents when he came off the air ambulance and they drove to an undisclosed location where he will continue his
recuperation.

According to the National Jewish, Speaker has been on a spectrum of antibiotics since he arrived at the hospital 8 weeks ago. He had surgery on July 17th,
to remove the upper right lobe of his lung, which contained a tennis ball sized area of infected tissue. The CT scans he had before surgery showed the
antibiotics had been effective in reducing the infection.

“I really appreciate the quality of care I have gotten from all the people at National Jewish,” said Speaker.

“Thanks to all they do, patients like me are able to walk out of here not only well, but better in so many ways,” he added.

Speaker has been released from the isolation order placed on him by the Denver Public Health authority and he is instructed to seek medical attention and
continue to have “directly observed” therapy, where a health professional must watch him take his daily medication to make sure he completes the
therapy.

The hospital recommends directly observed therapy for all its drug resistant TB patients because the treatment time is so long (two years in Speaker’s case)
and if the patient does not complete it, it raises the risk that he or she has a relapse and develops a more resistant form of the disease.

Apart from the directly observed therapy there are no other restrictions on Speaker, said the National Jewish. “He does not have to wear any kind of mask
and neither do the people around him”, they said.

Speaker will probably go back to the National Jewish in several months for follow up evaluation.

The original diagnosis by US public health officials when he left the US and travelled by commercial airliner to Europe, was that Speaker had extensively
drug-resistant tuberculosis, XDR-TB, but this was changed to multi drug resistant tuberculosis, MDR-TB, which is still hard to treat, but not as hard as XDR-TB.

Click here for more information about the National Jewish Medical and Research
Center

Click here for Fact Sheet on Multi Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) from
the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

: Catharine Paddock

The combination of extended wakefulness and low-dose alcohol has significant adverse effects on a person’s ability to drive, and elevates the risk of getting into a vehicular accident.

The study, authored by Mark E. Howard, PhD, of the Institute for Breathing and Sleep in Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia, focused on 19 volunteer professional drivers, who participated in a driving simulation and the Psychomotor Vigilance Task. The subjects were measured in a rested state (12-15 hours awake) and after extended wakefulness (18-21 hours awake) during two sessions. Alcohol was administered during one session, with performance measured at blood alcohol concentrations (BAC) of 0.00 percent, 0.03 percent and 0.05 percent in a non-sleep deprived state, and at 0.03 percent after extended wakefulness (at 1 a.m. and at 3 a.m.). During the second session, tests were performed at the same times without alcohol.

According to the results, extended wakefulness, combined with low-dose alcohol (0.03 percent BAC), resulted in more lapses and greater variation in lane position and speed than did a BAC of 0.05 percent in a rested state.

“In addition to alcohol, sleepiness also increases the risk of road crashes. It is estimated that 15 to 30 percent of traffic accidents are directly related to driver sleepiness, as determined by crash circumstances. Although there are conclusive data regarding the separate effects of alcohol and sleepiness on driving, in real-life situations it is common for these two conditions to occur simultaneously (alcohol-related accidents occur more commonly in the early hours of the morning). The combination of legal low-dose alcohol and extended wakefulness results in impairment worse than that at an alcohol level known to increase accident risk. Avoiding alcohol when driving after extended wakefulness may reduce accident risk,” said Dr. Howard.

SLEEP is the official journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC, a joint venture of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society.

SleepEducation, a Web site maintained by the AASM, provides information about various sleep disorders, the forms of treatment available, recent news on the topic of sleep, sleep studies that have been conducted and a listing of sleep facilities.

American Academy of Sleep Medicine

While rare in wild animals, tool use is of widespread interest to researchers because of its relationship to animal cognition,
social learning and culture. Measuring the costs and benefits of tool use has been difficult, largely because if tool use occurs, all population
members typically exhibit the behavior. However, a new study that examines a subset of Western Australia’s Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphin
population and their use of marine sponges as tools, provides a unique opportunity to assess costs and benefits of tool use and document patterns of
transmission from mother to calf.

Led by Georgetown University’s Janet Mann, the researchers are the first to examine the relationship between tool use and fitness in wild animals.
Their findings are published in the December 10 edition of the journal PLoS ONE.

“It turns out the brainiacs of the marine world can also be tool-using workaholics, spending more time hunting with tools than any non-human
animal,” says Mann, professor of biology and psychology, who has been studying the Shark Bay dolphin population for more than 21 years. “This is
the first and only clear case of tool-use in a wild dolphin or whale.”

Mann, who started systematic data collection on the sponging behavior in these dolphins in 1989, found that 41 dolphins, in a population of thousands,
use marine sponges on their beaks as a foraging tool. These dolphins use sponges to find hidden prey in the sandy sea floor and spend more time using
their sponge-tool than any non-human tool user documented to date. Spongers are also ‘workaholics’ spending more time hunting, diving, and diving for
longer time periods, than other females in the population. They also tend to be solitary.

Comparing sponge-carrying (sponger) females to non-sponge-carrying (non-sponger) females, the researchers observed that spongers were more solitary,
spent more time in deep water channel habitats, dived for longer durations, and devoted more time to foraging than non-spongers. They also found that
even with these potential immediate costs, such as less time socializing, calving success of sponger females was not significantly different from
non-spongers.

“Despite these costs, they are successful at calving, so their workaholic tendencies pay off,” says Mann.

Mann and her co-authors also report a clear female-bias in the development of sponging. Almost all the spongers are females and they transmit this
behavior to their offspring.

“While a few males carry sponges, they seem to be slow learners in this regard,” notes Mann. Her team found that all female calves started
sponging before they were weaned, whereas male calves rarely used sponges, and if they did, it was after weaning.

The authors suggest that while daughters show a strong tendency to adopt the social and foraging behaviors of their mothers, sons appear to be less
interested in maternal behavior and are more concerned with finding other male associates. Also, if the mother tends to be solitary, as is the case
with spongers, then sons tend to socialize during brief separations from their mothers while daughters will go off and hunt on their own like their
mothers.

“We believe these early sex differences foreshadow the long-term reproductive interests of males and females, with males being focused on alliance
formation, necessary for successful mating, and females focused on foraging skills, necessary to meet the demands of three to eight years of nursing
each calf,” says Mann.

Although sponging was discovered in the mid-1980s, the behavior is difficult to observe because spongers hunt for fish primarily in deep channels
(8-13 meters). Mann has observed the behavior when water clarity was exceptional, leaving no doubt that the sponge is used to help search for prey
that burrow in sand. Although sponging is the predominant foraging technique used in these channels, one family of spongers (grandmother, mother and
two daughters) use another deep water area, suggesting that the behavior is not restricted to channels only, and traditional use of other areas can
emerge.

While Mann continues to seek answers to new questions in her research on animal behavior, she also works with her students on their own research
questions, both on the Shark Bay project and in the classroom. Her students are examining the long-term development and transmission of foraging
behavior, social networks, and factors related to female reproductive success. Mann teaches Animal Behavior, Monkeys, Apes and Human Evolution and
Behavior at Georgetown. She also takes up to four students with her to Australia each summer, giving them the opportunity to learn the latest field
research techniques.

Additional researchers on Mann’s team were from Florida International University, Metropolitan State College of Denver and University of
Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

This study was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from the Eppley Foundation for Research, Georgetown
University, the Helen Brach Foundation and the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration.

About Georgetown University

Georgetown University is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit University in America, founded in 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll. Georgetown today is a major
student-centered, international, research university offering respected undergraduate, graduate and professional programs on its three campuses in
Washington, D.C. For more information about Georgetown University, visit georgetown.edu.

Related Links
Shark Bay Dolphin Research Project
Janet Mann
Department of Biology
Department of Psychology
Related Story: Dr. Janet Mann Collects Dolphin Behavior Data
National Science Foundation

Citation
Why Do Dolphins Carry Sponges?
Mann J, Sargeant BL, Watson-Capps JJ, Gibson QA, Heithaus MR, et al. (2008)
PLoS ONE 3(12): e3868.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003868
Click here to view article online

PLoS ONE (eISSN-1932-6203) is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication. PLoS ONE welcomes reports on primary research from any scientific discipline. It provides:

Open-access-freely accessible online, authors retain copyright
Fast publication times
Peer reviewed by expert, practicing researchers
Post-publication tools to indicate quality and impact
Community-based dialogue on articles
Worldwide media coverage

PLoS ONE is published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit organization.

PLOS ONE

A special August issue of the Journal of Comparative Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association, presents a host of studies that investigate the way that animals adapt their calls, chirps, barks and whistles to their social situation.

The special issue, Acoustic Interaction in Animal Groups: Signaling in Noisy and Social Contexts, reports on findings from the natural world such as:

- Male gray treefrogs (Hyla versicolor) give out longer but fewer calls in reaction to the calls of other males. In other words, when these frogs are chorusing full blast, a male seeking female attention will change the rhythm of his call to break out of the chorus.

- Using an array of microphones to identify individual callers among wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncates), scientists found that although dolphins whistle more in social situations, individuals decrease their vocal output in large groups, when their whistles are more likely to be drowned out.

- Nestling tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) adjust their call output to parents when there’s more noisy competition from the brood.

- Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis) in larger social groups use calls with greater information than do individuals in smaller groups, and female-male interactions in opposite-sex chickadee pairs reflect the rate of male production of that distinctive chick-a-dee call.

- Two different species of North American katydids synchronize calls within species, using somewhat different methods. Whereas the synchrony of N. spiza is a byproduct of signal competition between evenly matched males, that of N. nebrascensis seems to be an adaptation that allows cooperating males to make sure females can pick up critical features of their calls. These different routes to synchrony suggest different evolutionary paths that have led to the way that male katydids acoustically advertise their availability.

Review articles assess the evidence to date and outline future directions. For example, Peter Tyack, PhD, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, concludes that, “Pooling data on vocal imitation, vocal convergence and compensation for noise suggests a wider [cross-species] distribution of vocal production learning among mammals than has been generally appreciated.” It could mean that mammals have more of the neural underpinnings for learning to vocalize than has been previously thought.

The Journal of Comparative Psychology publishes articles from a comparative perspective and features original empirical and theoretical research on the behavior, cognition, perception and sociality of diverse species. It is edited by Gordon Burghardt, PhD, of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he is alumni distinguished service professor, Departments of Psychology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.

“Animal communication has been a major emphasis in animal behavior and comparative psychology for many decades,” Dr. Burghardt says. “However, in recent years, we have gone beyond the straightforward analysis of dyadic interactions between two individuals. We now consider the role of eavesdropping, deception and noisy environments in shaping signals and investigate how animals deploy them in various contexts.”

Special Issue: “Acoustic Interaction in Animal Groups: Signaling in Noisy and Social Contexts.” Journal of Comparative Psychology. Vol. 122, No. 3.

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