Antioxidants: hype or… hazard?

Vitamin and mineral supplements are big business. So although the manufacturers make a lot of claims, can you really believe what they say?

Bottle of multivitamin supplements, complete a to z (Photo by Mike1024, via Wikimedia Commons)

For that matter, how do you know whether to believe any claims about medical products? With the amount of money involved in the health industry, there’s, well, a bit of a temptation to shape the truth.

In mid-2009, an entire scientific journal, the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine – put out by the prestigious publisher Elsevier - was found to be basically an advertising brochure for the pharmaceutical company Merck. It claimed to cover reviews of research, but all the reviews were all suspiciously favourable to Merck’s products.

(Shortly after, Elsevier revealed that another 5 Australian journals were also sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.)

So where do you turn for real, reliable medical research?

Smells like teen romance

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. But do humans use pheromones to attract a mate?

Italian honeybees (Apis mellifera ligustica) at the entrance to their hive. Many of the workers are 'fanning', which distributes a powerful homing pheromone from a gland on the bee's abdomen, and also helps to ventilate and cool the hive. (Photo by Ken Thomas, via Wikimedia Commons)

The answer seems to be “maybe”. But if we are attracted by scent, it may have more to do with finding our immune systems than anything else.

 

Studies have shown that we are more likely to be attracted to someone with different immunity to ourselves, presumably to give the broadest benefit to our potential offspring.

To find out more about why some people smell more attractive then others, and potentially how to test you and and your partner’s “olfactory compatibility”, read “The Smell of Love” in Psychology Today.

Pheremones and falling in love

A certain day in February tends to prompt an awful lot of people to wear their heart on their sleeve, so to speak, and declare their true feelings for someone. But what makes that one individual stand out from the crowd to become the object of such a response? Poets and philosophers have pondered this question through the ages,  and in recent times, scientists have set their sights on the issue, too.

More than a drop in the ocean

Brisbane’s floods in January have affected more than just the river and the land – now they are stretching out into Moreton Bay as well.

A visualisation of the flood plume in Moreton Bay (Image by Mitchell Lyons, UQ)

The increased flow of fresh water and sediments has the potential to damage seagrass and other life in the bay’s ecosystem.

A team from the University of Queensland’s School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management are helping to monitor the flood plume and any ensuing damage using photos from both divers and satellites, as well as wireless underwater sensors.

The project leader, Associate Professor Ron Johnstone, said:

“We have already observed the death of algae and bivalves and the sensors will be able to record accurate and real time measurements of other changes in the marine environment as a result of the floods.

“This information will help us understand how the floods are impacting on life in the bay and what it is that is causing some of the plants and animals to die.”

For more on this project, see the Joint Remote Sensing Research Program and the Smart Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Technologies Project at the University of Queensland.