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Children Help Their Mothers for Decades
Itninja writes "NPR reported this morning on some interesting findings regarding mothers and their children. From the article: 'Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That's because a baby's cells linger in its mom's body for decades and -- like stem cells -- may help to repair damage when she gets sick. It's such an enticing idea that even the scientists who came up with the idea worry that it may be too beautiful to be true.'"
From a evolution and survival of the species standpoint, it makes sense. Since the offspring is so dependant on the mother for food for many years after birth, the species needs to ensure that the mother lives to provide.
The whole thing is written in that horrible style that you get in magazines called things like "You and Your Baby". I can almost smell the perfumed baby products wafting up from the text.
I think I'd rather read Creationist writing.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Since that's never been observed (and I'm sure someone has looked at the stats, it's such an easy study), this can't be true.
I suspect these so-called "scientists"
You go on and ASSUME something, and then you put "scientists" in quotes.
Because, clearly, the master of assumptions is more of a scientist than these lab-coat wearing bozos!
You can't take the sky from me...
Hey, you know what, you're right. The professional researchers who did this work must have overlooked it. All that work wasted!
Seriously.. why is it that with every science story that comes on here, there's some tool who says "Hey, what about [ridiculously simple and/or well-known concept]?"
How do you think these people get to be researchers? Lotto?
Actually, I disagree here. Men do more dangerous things because we are more capable of doing more dangerous things successfully. This isn't just bravado. There is a certain amount of risk assessment to every action a person takes. And depending on how active a person is dictates their self awareness as well as how capable they are of performing a given feat. A given act may be considered objectively dangerous but every act danger level is subjective to the person performing the act.
Men seem to do more dangerous things because they are more likely to survive the 'dangerous' activity. This should balance out the lifespan issue at least somewhat. Plus in modern life the average person isn't excatly the daredevil risk taker, yet the lifespan discrepency remains.
A more interesting study would be comparing the lifespans of women with certain numbers of children. Spinsters, vs. one child, vs. 2 children and so on. It is not just many vs. none since there is also an inherent risk in the act of birthing achild. I would think so anyway. Of course, it might be difficult to separate lifestyle and environment from those studies, but who knows?
When I read the title "Children Help Their Mothers for Decades" my first thought was "yea, she knows how to take you on a helluva guilt trip."
God help you if you forget Mother's Day.
and FYI to the Slashdot crowd: Valentine's Day is coming up. Send your mother some flowers. Think of it as building up karma... because you're going to need something to burn next time she thinks you ignored her.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
For future reference, if you're trying to make an impressive sounding scientific conjecture, you might consider expanding your sources beyond Wikipedia and a prime-time television show by Jerry Bruckheimer.
That could explain why men are about 4x more likely to be killed by lightning strikes than women:. pdf
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/severe_weather/light04
"start street racing just because of the type of car that pulled up next to her at the stop light?"
Maybe.
Primarily, men tend to have more physically dangerious careers and jobs. Hands down, military service (wars) reduces lifespans. Furthermore, more men still are the bread-winners, hence men are more prone to accidents and what not, e.g. construction jobs. Men end up driving and traveling a fair bit more as well; while there may be an increase to do stupid ass things as you suggest for men, they are also put in those situations far more. Of course, soccer moms will argue the counterpoint (but some of the worse drivers I've seen are easily these afternoon kid-transporting moms).
Secondarily, testosterone is a cause but not in the way that you think. The number one killer, at least in the US, is still cardiovascular disease I believe. Testosterone, or lack of estrogen, makes men far more likely to have heart attacks earlier in life (i.e. 40s). Women have the same issue as well, but they must wait until menopause, to which their estrogen levels dropoff and testosterone rises or becomes a more dominant hormone that it was in their earlier years; arteries and what not start clogging at about the same rate as men, but at a much older age. So they die of similar reasons, just in a different decade of life. (If you are wondering why the gap may not be as great given the 15-20 year difference, health care for men is generally considered far superior to women--the gap has considerably closed but the difference was profound in up to probably the 90s).
Third, I wouldn't put it past women to get more and more 'violent' either. It's been shown more and more that as women become more financially independent and in a culture with continued sexual freedom (yes, compared to the prior decade, ad nauseum), their behavior starts mirroring men. Not all a bad thing of course, and their behavior is not exactly like men of course either, but then again, the number of women I've seen pulling jackass 'make you my bitch' stunts is plainly on the rise.
Fourth, and partly in jest, the number of jerks street racing is offset by the number of women who just can't drive.
I disagree with your analysis.
IMO, men do more dangerous things because they (in general/historically) don't place as much value on the survival of the family as the women have, therefore they are willing to take more of a risk than women typically are. Also, testosterone has been shown to encourage "aggressive" behavior, often resulting in people "under the influence" misunderestimating how much risk is involved with various activities. Factors like these have nothing to do with male or female inherent "survivability".
Aside from basic physical tests like how many pounds men or women can bench press, there is nothing that indicates that, given equivalent training, men are more likely to perform more dangerous actions successfully than women - only that men are more likely to perform more dangerous actions period.
Actually, there are certain studies that indicate that women tend to have higher tolerances to long-term pain & stress than men, and tend to live longer than men in a low-survival rate environment (although that might be partly due to the risk-taking nature of men reducing their survival rate).