Women Tend to Have Better Sense of Touch Due to Smaller Finger Size

People who have smaller fingers have a finer sense of touch, according to new research in the Dec. 16 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. This finding explains why women tend to have better tactile acuity than men, because women on average have smaller fingers.
See Also:
Health & Medicine

• Healthy Aging
• Skin Cancer
• Menopause

Mind & Brain

• Opium
• Perception
• Gender Difference

Reference

• Sensory neuron
• Sensory system
• Nociceptor
• Neurobiology

"Neuroscientists have long known that some people have a better sense of touch than others, but the reasons for this difference have been mysterious," said Daniel Goldreich, PhD, of McMaster University in Ontario, one of the study's authors. "Our discovery reveals that one important factor in the sense of touch is finger size."

To learn why the sexes have different finger sensitivity, the authors first measured index fingertip size in 100 university students. Each student's tactile acuity was then tested by pressing progressively narrower parallel grooves against a stationary fingertip -- the tactile equivalent of the optometrist's eye chart. The authors found that people with smaller fingers could discern tighter grooves.

"The difference between the sexes appears to be entirely due to the relative size of the person's fingertips," said Ethan Lerner, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, who is unaffiliated with the study. "So, a man with fingertips that are smaller than a woman's will be more sensitive to touch than the woman."

The authors also explored why more petite fingers are more acute. Tinier digits likely have more closely spaced sensory receptors, the authors concluded. Several types of sensory receptors line the skin's interior and each detect a specific kind of outside stimulation. Some receptors, named Merkel cells, respond to static indentations (like pressing parallel grooves), while others capture vibrations or movement.

When the skin is stimulated, activated receptors signal the central nervous system, where the brain processes the information and generates a picture of what a surface "feels" like. Much like pixels in a photograph, each skin receptor sends an aspect of the tactile image to the brain -- more receptors per inch supply a clearer image.

To find out whether receptors are more densely packed in smaller fingers, the authors measured the distance between sweat pores in some of the students, because Merkel cells cluster around the bases of sweat pores. People with smaller fingers had greater sweat pore density, which means their receptors are probably more closely spaced.

"Previous studies from other laboratories suggested that individuals of the same age have about the same number of vibration receptors in their fingertips. Smaller fingers would then have more closely spaced vibration receptors," Goldreich said. "Our results suggest that this same relationship between finger size and receptor spacing occurs for the Merkel cells."

Whether the total number of Merkel cell clusters remains fixed in adults and how the sense of touch fluctuates in children as they age is still unknown. Goldreich and his colleagues plan to determine how tactile acuity changes as a finger grows and receptors grow farther apart.

The research was supported by the National Eye Institute and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in Canada.

Superatoms Mimic Elements: Research Gives New Perspective on Periodic Table

Transforming lead into gold is an impossible feat, but a similar type of "alchemy" is not only possible, but cost-effective too. Three Penn State researchers have shown that certain combinations of elemental atoms have electronic signatures that mimic the electronic signatures of other elements.
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Matter & Energy

• Physics
• Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Quantum Physics
• Nanotechnology
• Materials Science

Reference

• Metal
• Transition metal
• Electron configuration
• Materials science

According to the team's leader A. Welford Castleman Jr., Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science and Evan Pugh Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics, "the findings could lead to much cheaper materials for widespread applications such as new sources of energy, methods of pollution abatement, and catalysts on which industrial nations depend heavily for chemical processing."

The researchers also showed that the atoms that have been identified so far in these mimicry events can be predicted simply by looking at the periodic table. The team used advanced experimentation and theory to quantify these new and unexpected findings. "We're getting a whole new perspective of the periodic table," said Castleman.

The team's findings will be published in the 28 December 2009 early on-line issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and at a later date in the print edition of the journal.

Castleman and his team -- which includes Samuel Peppernick, a former Penn State graduate student who now is a postdoctoral researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Dasitha Gunaratne, a Penn State graduate student -- used a technique, called photoelectron imaging spectroscopy, to examine similarities between titanium monoxide and nickel, zirconium monoxide and palladium, and tungsten carbide and platinum.

"Photoelectron spectroscopy measures the energy it takes to remove electrons from various electronic states of atoms or molecules, while simultaneously capturing snapshots of these electron-detachment events with a digital camera," said Castleman. "The method allows us to determine the binding energies of the electrons and also to observe directly the nature of the orbitals in which the electrons resided before they were detached. We found that the amount of energy required to remove electrons from a titanium-monoxide molecule is the same as the amount of energy required to remove electrons from a nickel atom. The same is true for the systems zirconium monoxide and palladium and tungsten carbide and platinum. The key is that all of the pairs are composed of isoelectronic species, which are atoms with the same electron configuration."

Castleman noted that, in this case, the term isoelectronic refers to the number of electrons present in the outer shell of an atom or molecule.

The team looked at images of the photoelectron spectroscopy data. Bright spots in the images, which correspond to the energy of the electrons emitted during their removal from the atoms' outer shells, appeared to be similar between the pairs of species in the three systems studied. Likewise, graphical displays of energy peaks were similar between the pairs, and theoretical calculations also resulted in the pairs having matching energy levels.

Castleman explained that the molecules titanium monoxide, zirconium monoxide, and tungsten carbide are superatoms of nickel, palladium, and platinum, respectively. Superatoms are clusters of atoms that exhibit some property of elemental atoms. Former work in Castleman's lab has involved investigating the notion of superatoms. One of his previous experiments showed that a cluster of 13 aluminum atoms behaves like a single iodine atom. Adding a single electron to this aluminum-atom system results in the cluster behaving like a rare-gas atom. Further, he showed that a cluster of 14 aluminum atoms has a reactivity similar to an alkaline earth atom.

Now, Castleman's new research takes the superatom idea to a new level and provides a sound quantitative foundation for the concept of superatoms. "It looks like we can predict which combinations of elemental atoms mimic other elemental atoms," he said. "For example, by looking at the periodic table, you can predict that titanium monoxide will be a superatom of nickel. Simply start at titanium, which has four outer-shell electrons, and move six elements to the right, because atomic oxygen possesses six outer-shell electrons. The element you end up on is nickel, whose 10 outer-shell electrons make it isoelectronic with the 10 outer-shell electron molecule resulting from the combination of titanium and oxygen. We thought this finding must be a curious coincidence, so we tried it with other atoms and we found that a pattern emerged."

Castleman said that he doesn't know if the pattern will occur across the entire periodic table or if it will be confined to only a part of it. Right now, he and his team are working through the transition-metal atoms. In the future, they plan to take the research a step further to investigate whether or not the superatoms are chemically similar to their respective single atoms. "Platinum is used in nearly all catalytic converters in automobiles, but it is very expensive," said Castleman. "In contrast, tungsten carbide, which mimics platinum, is cheap. A significant amount of money can be saved if catalytic-converter manufacturers are able to use tungsten carbide instead of platinum. Likewise, palladium is used in certain combustion processes, yet it is mimicked by zirconium monoxide, which is less expensive by a factor of 500. Our new findings are exciting from both a scientific as well as a practical point of view."

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Zovirax is an oral drug approved by FDA to treat the symptoms of herpes.

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How does Zovirax

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H5N1

H5N1 is an avian influenza virus subtype.
See also:
Health & Medicine

• Influenza
• Bird Flu
• Cold and Flu

Plants & Animals

• Bird Flu Research
• Virology
• Agriculture and Food

The H5N1 flu is what is commonly meant when talking of "bird flu" or "avian influenza".

It is a viral disease that causes illness in many species including humans and is a pandemic threat.

Due to the high lethality and virulence of HPAI A(H5N1), its endemic presence, its increasingly large host reservoir, and its significant ongoing mutations, the H5N1 virus is the world's largest current pandemic threat, and billions of dollars are being spent researching H5N1 and preparing for a potential influenza pandemic.

At least 12 companies and 17 governments are developing pre-pandemic influenza vaccines in 28 different clinical trials that, if successful, could turn a deadly pandemic infection into a nondeadly one.

Full-scale production of a vaccine that could prevent any illness at all from the strain would require at least three months after the virus's emergence to begin, but it is hoped that vaccine production could increase until one billion doses were produced by one year after the initial identification of the virus..

For more information about the topic H5N1, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Flu vaccine — The flu vaccine is a vaccine to protect against the highly variable influenza virus. The annually updated trivalent flu vaccine for the 2005-2006 ... > read more
Avian flu — Avian flu (also "bird flu", "avian influenza", "bird influenza"), means "flu from viruses adapted to birds", but is sometimes mistakenly used to ... > read more
Pandemic — A pandemic is an epidemic (an outbreak of an infectious disease) that spreads worldwide, or at least across a large region. There have been a number ... > read more
Influenza pandemic — An influenza pandemic is a large scale epidemic of the influenza virus, such as the 1918 Spanish flu. The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that ... > read mo

Corruption in American Health Care

"So far, Congress' response to the health care crisis has been alarmingly disappointing in three ways. First, by willingly accepting enormous sums from health care special interests, our representatives have obligated themselves to their benefactors' interests rather than to those of the American people. More than 3,330 health care lobbyists - six for every member of Congress - contributed more than one-quarter of a billion dollars in the first and second quarters of 2009. A nearly equal amount has been contributed on this issue from non-health care organizations. This exchange of money prompted a Public Citizen lobbyist to comment, "A person can reach no other conclusion than this is a quid pro quo [this for that] activity."

Continue reading "Saving Health Care, Saving America"

It goes further down hill from there.

This article should give every physician a gut wrenching reaction, if not disgust at the corruption which has become rationalzied and rampant in some parts of the country. It points out how immorality creeps in slowly and devours a system. I reacted to the article in such a manner. From personal experience in such an environment I can describe how market influences alter perception and actions in order to survive in such a market. The financial imperatives create overwhelming features which can only be avoided if the overall physician community reacts appropriately in unison rather than in self interest. Beyond this the only moral choice for the individual physician is to leave that community (which in itself strengthens the hand of the 'cartel'.

In a second article on The Health Care Blog By JEFF GOLDSMITH

Atul Gofigure: Why McAllen Should Have Mattered in the Health Reform Debate

Back in June, Atul Gawande, a Harvard trained surgeon, published a riveting article in the New Yorker about the physician community in McAllen Texas.

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