This week in health news around the world

Heartbreak, autism, the discovery of a new species and more in this week's round-up.

Heartbreak can hurt, says study

A new study has found that sudden emotional stress such as the death of a spouse can significantly increase the risk of atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat. Researchers have long studied a phenomena called stress cardiomyopathy, or broken heart syndrome. In the new study, published in the journal Open Heart , scientists looked at a national registry in Denmark of 88,600 people who were diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. They found that people who had lost a partner were 41 per cent more likely to develop atrial fibrillation in the first month after losing their partner compared to people who hadn’t. A higher risk for the condition continued for a year. They also found that the risk was especially high for younger people, and in people whose partner died suddenly or unexpectedly.

Autism and communication

Researchers at the University of Kent, U.K. are arguing that creativity and drama can be used as a bridge to communicate with autistic children. In a joint article, “Material voices: intermediality and autism” in the journal

Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance , Dr. Melissa Trimingham and Professor Nicola Shaughnessy of the university’s School of Arts say that engaging with children in an all-surrounding drama experience using lights, sound, puppets and masked characters, can help with the challenging behaviour. The writers are parents of autistic children themselves and have personal experience of family life with autism. Through detailed observations of two children, they demonstrate how this pioneering research unlocked some of the many and various languages autistic children use, facilitating their self-awareness. They argue for wider use of creative “material” languages such as puppetry, costumes, projection, microphones, lights and sound in play as a bridge between the lived experience of autism and practices of education and care.

New rare whale species

Researchers have identified a new rare species of beaked whale with a range in the remote North Pacific Ocean. The international team of experts searched museums and other sources for DNA samples to determine the existence of the new whale, which is smaller and darker in colour than the more common Baird’s beaked whale. As described in a

Marine Mammal Science article, the new species is an elusive, deep-diving whale about 25 feet long that is rarely seen.

“Every known specimen of this new whale found so far has been dead and, in most cases, decomposing on a remote sub-Arctic beach,” said Dr. Phillip Morin, lead author of the article. “Without a full skeleton of an adult animal or detailed measurements, we had to use forensic genetics to describe the evolutionary differences of this new species.”

Prejudice is universal

When it comes to prejudice, it does not matter if you are smart or not, or conservative or liberal. Each group has their own specific biases. In a recent study, psychologists show that low cognitive ability (i.e. intelligence, verbal ability) was not a consistent predictor of prejudice. Cognitive ability, whether high or low, only predicts prejudice towards specific groups. The results are published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science . “Very few people are immune to expressing prejudice, especially prejudice towards people they disagree with,” says lead author Mark Brandt of Tilburg University, Netherlands. Analysing the results, the researchers found that people with both relatively higher and lower levels of cognitive ability show approximately equal levels of intergroup bias, but towards different sets of groups. The results are published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science .

Demystifying Science:

What is a vortex laser?

It is the likely future of communication, according to a study published in the latest issue of Science . Laser beams when twisted in a way that makes them travel in a corkscrew pattern, encode information into different vortex twists. This way they are able to carry 10 times or more the amount of information than that of conventional lasers, which move linearly. Usually, the vortex laser has been too large to work on today’s computers. But researchers report being able to shrink the vortex laser to the point where it is compatible with computer chips. For a while now, technology companies have been worrying that they will not be able to shrink transistors much further and encode more information in chips without running into the limits of physics laws. If vortex lasers live up to their promise, they might allay these fears.