News Briefs

Puppy Love Goes Way Back

Our human ancestors treated their canine companions a lot like we do today, right down to the table scraps, a new study suggests.

U of A anthropologist Robert Losey studies 5,000- to 8,000-year-old dog skeletons from Lake Baikal, Siberia. He has found dogs, some wearing decorative collars, buried alongside humans in cemeteries. It offers some of the earliest evidence of dog domestication and suggests dogs were held in the same high esteem as humans.

Through chemical analysis of dog bones, Losey also determined the Lake Baikal dogs had the same diet as humans. He hopes the archeological record will ultimately help us better understand what lies at the heart of perhaps our most enduring interspecies relationship.

-Geoff McMaster

That Mid-life Slump is a Myth, Study Finds

Happiness does not stall in mid-life, as many sit-coms and muscle car ads would have you believe. In fact, we get happier as we age, according to a new study that asked participants, "How happy are you with your life right now?"

Researchers found that the participants sampled were happier in their 30s and early 40s than in their late teens and early 20s. The Edmonton-based study, led by Nancy Galambos, a professor in the Department of Psychology, tracked one cohort of people from ages 18 to 43 and another from ages 23 to 37 for 25 years. The study was published in the journal Developmental Psychology.

Although the happiness trajectory from age 18 to 43 generally pointed upward, not everyone in the study followed the trend. Not surprisingly, the research shows that no stage of life is exempt from unhappiness.

"If I'm divorced and unemployed, and I have poor health at age 43, I'm not going to be happier than I was at age 18," says Galambos.

"It's important to recognize the diversity of experiences as people move across life."

Students are the most depressed in society, notes Galambos.

"Things can improve, and if you take care of some mental health problems such as depression and anxiety now, you might prevent them worsening in the future," she says.

Happiness does matter, says study co-author Harvey Krahn, a professor in the Department of Sociology. "Let's design a more social world that allows more people to be happy, even if they're grumps at heart."

-Donna McKinnon

U of A Tackles Zika Virus Detection

Researchers across campus are working to develop an inexpensive hand-held device that can detect the potentially deadly Zika virus within minutes.

The mosquito-born virus is linked to a recent dramatic rise in microcephaly - an often fatal congenital condition associated with incomplete brain development - in babies born to mothers infected during pregnancy. As of early February, Zika had been reported in 52 countries and experts estimate it will spread even further. The virus could cause autoimmune and neurological complications in those infected.

A team of virologists led by Tom Hobman in the Department of Cell Biology - among the first in the world to join the battle against Zika virus - has combined efforts with the Ingenuity Lab, an interdisciplinary group of more than 120 researchers, in a quest to develop the detection device. The device would be similar to a glucometer, which people with diabetes use to monitor blood-sugar levels. The current test is expensive, time-consuming and can only be done in a hospital.

Ingenuity Lab director Carlo Montemagno says the first Zika virus detection device could be ready by August 2016.

-Michael Brown