[GSlob]

well, who doesn't have co-workers who don't hibernate in complete torpor? Only the appearance of the boss can disrupt it.

[sageb1]

A kind of self-defensive/recuperative state of rest?

[I see my hands]

"Hibernators must have compelling adaptive reasons for interrupting torpor with bouts of arousal"

The mystery of morning wood.

---

Good stuff. Nice tomorrows ahead if we get there.

Good article, thanks.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Who'd want to sleep for six months? You'd wake up with a Hell of an appetite and a raging boner.

[M-cubed]

No answers...Just questions....Not sure this is the right link...http://library.uchc.edu/bhn/cite/nyt/2602depr.html

[neverdem]

Science News has great references. I could follow up on a previous link with the PNAS title that they provided, getting the abstract and the whole article in the last link, a PDF link.

Barnyard Pharmaceuticals

Golden Eggs: Engineered hens lay drugs

Oviduct-specific expression of two therapeutic proteins in transgenic hens

Oviduct-specific expression of two therapeutic proteins in transgenic hens PDF link

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list. Anyone can post any unposted link as they see fit.

[Marie]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/18/healthscience/sndia.php

Is diabetes a result of ice age?
By Sandra Blakeslee The New York Times

THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2005

When temperatures plummet, most people bundle up in thick sweaters, stay cozy indoors and stoke up on comfort food. But a provocative new theory suggests that thousands of years ago, juvenile diabetes may have evolved as a way to stay warm.

People with the disease, also known as Type 1 diabetes, have excessive amounts of sugar, or glucose, in their blood.

The theory argues that juvenile diabetes may have developed in ancestral people who lived in Northern Europe about 12,000 years ago when temperatures fell by 10 degrees Fahrenheit in a few decades and an ice age arrived.

Archaeological evidence suggests countless people froze to death, while others fled south. But Dr. Sharon Moalem, an expert in evolutionary medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, says she believes that some people may have adapted to the extreme cold.

High levels of blood glucose prevent cells and tissues from forming ice crystals, Moalem said. In other words, Type 1 diabetes would have prevented many of our ancestors from freezing to death...

[Nathan Zachary]

Inducing "topor" in seasonal workers could save a lot of government welfare money. They wouldn't need to eat, and could be warehoused in cold storage until needed for construction season again...

[Graymatter]

"Other patients would benefit if donated organs could be put in cold storage for prolonged shelf lives."

How does hibernation enter into that? Do removed ("donated") organs hibernate by themselves?

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

If they can push hibernation all the way to suspended animation, then that could help in space travel (radiation shielding a "sleeping pod" is easier than an entire ship).

[Mrs. Don-o]

bump for later

[xJones]

"Squirrels drop their body temperatures to that of an ice cube," says biologist Brian M. Barnes of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. "The brain receives very little blood. Very little oxygen enters the tissues." A hibernating animal's heart rate and blood pressure also fall significantly during torpor.

So that's what's wrong with my brother-in-law.

[Gator113]

This was very interesting.

Thank you for yet another great post.