It's Thanksgiving. Where should you put your pumpkin?

It's Thanksgiving. Where should you put your pumpkin? - This fall, there is no other ingredient working it quite as hard as pumpkin. With little concern for overexposure, it makes appearances everywhere, from cocktails to dessert. Thanksgiving, of course, kicks off a few weeks when normally tempered appetites turn to splurges; and food professionals are eager to use pumpkin's nostalgic charms to drum up holiday overindulgence, adding it to everything from ravioli to brewskis. By the end of November, pumpkin's been so overhyped, it's practically a Kardashian.

Its omnipresence is understandable, in some ways. Pumpkins are jolly, bright, and quintessentially autumnal. Every child looks a little cuter photographed in a pumpkin patch. Pumpkins conjure a jack-o'-lantern's smile, and they lend a cheery spray-tan glow to whatever they are blended into. These days, our pumpkin appetites are whetted as early as September, when drugstores display their plastic pumpkins, and quirky heirloom rouge vif d'etampes pumpkins pile up on well-appointed porches.

Pumpkins, which are a subcategory of squash, are the quintessential New World food. Historians believe they were first grown in Central America, five millennia BCE, and thanks to their versatility and long-term storability, they spread widely throughout the continent. Soon after Columbus led European adventurers to the New World and back, pumpkin vines twined their way into European gardens, and the squashes were prevalent in Europe decades before the Pilgrims first gave thanks in Massachusetts.

Pumpkin pie, with its sweet spicing, is the true star of the pumpkin world, and it shares a flavor profile with older sweetmeats like gingerbread and mince pie. Though the Plymouth colonists likely ate pumpkin at early harvest celebrations, pumpkin pies weren't on the first Thanksgiving menus (no ovens, for starters). Versions of it did show up in European cookbooks in the 17th century, and a 1796 version of the first American cookbook, Amelia Simmons' American Cookery, included a "pompkin" pudding that was baked in a dough crust. Today, of course, pumpkin pie is a near-requisite dessert on the Thanksgiving table, and the Libby company, a subsidiary of Nestle, plants approximately 5,000 acres of pumpkins to fill its cans of pumpkin puree. (Last year, by the way? Terrible for pumpkins. You'll be spending a little more on your canned pumpkin this year.)

The humble pumpkin

But as fond as we all are of pumpkins, they can be a problematic ingredient. Jane Grigson, the seminal British food writer who was always frank about an ingredient's shortcomings, wrote that "careless cooking can make it seem wet and pointless as a form of nourishment." Undercooked or raw pumpkin can have a weird tooth-gripping tannic quality. In the ultimate blow, last year Cook's Illustrated decided that pumpkin alone couldn't carry off an ideal pumpkin pie. In order to truly shine, Cook's concluded, it needed a hidden foundation of candied yams.

Used well, however, pumpkins can bring a lot of pleasure. I spent two weeks saying yes to pumpkin in almost every form (both homemade goods and store bought) to determine the best ways to channel our Thanksgiving-tide enthusiasm for the squash. Herewith, my findings.

Don't fret about the can.

Recipe writers often claim canned pumpkin does quite nicely—certainly much better than the wet and stringy pulp of a decorative Jack-o'-lantern pumpkin. (Libby uses a decidedly homely, dun-colored pumpkin breed, Select Dickinson, for its canning purposes.) I double-checked this assertion by making side-by-side pumpkin pies, one with a puree of a roasted "cheese" pumpkin (considered a fine cooking pumpkin), and one with a can of pre-processed puree. And, in fact, the canned pumpkin was more charismatic in flavor and hue. The main exceptions to the go-with-the can rule are recipes, particularly savory ones, where you might want a little more body from the squash: gratins, soups, or ravioli. (In these cases, I'd actually be more inclined to use a different squash altogether—Hubbard, buttercup, or butternut—and call it pumpkin for festive purposes. Don't worry; plenty of chefs do the same thing).

Do use pumpkin as a savory ingredient.

European cooks have a lot of dynamic pumpkin recipes that rely less on sweet spice and more on the pumpkin's own sunny flavor: Think of the stuffed Mantuan pasta that Mario Batali popularized at Babbo. Filled with pumpkin and seasoned with sage and the bitter almond taste of amaretti cookies, it's a dish that, when well-made, dances nimbly between sweet and savory. Sage is indeed a brilliant friend to pumpkin, as are cheese, ham, and/or a little bit of chili spice, combinations that can easily be worked into a soup. If you're looking for a less traditional pumpkin side dish for your Thanksgiving table, I love to add little bits of roasted pumpkin (or other squash) to a green salad, especially if I throw in some pomegranate seeds or fuyu persimmon as a tangy-sweet counterbalance. In my weeks of pumpkin proliferation, I also had good luck with prosciutto-pumpkin gnocchi and, even better, a leek, pumpkin, and cheese gratin from Richard Olney's Provence: The Beautiful Cookbook that even won over my squash-averse husband. It, or a similar casserole like this tian of pumpkin, would make a swell Thanksgiving side dish.

Don't overdo the spice.

My theory is that people don't actually like the flavor of pumpkin quite as much as they love Thanksgiving itself, and the aroma of the sweet spices—ginger, cinnamon, and clove—used in traditional pumpkin pies. As such, many pumpkin specialties and recipes add so much spice to the mix that they both drown out the pumpkin and add an acrid flavor to the item in question. If you see a recipe with more than a teaspoon or more of cinnamon, be wary.

Don't overdo the cream.

A huge number of new-school pumpkin desserts that have found their way into Thanksgiving recipe compilations—flans, crème brulées, mousses, and cheesecakes—try to make pumpkin lighter in texture and richer in mouthfeel by piling on the cream and eggs. I made as sophisticated a pumpkin cheesecake as possible (from cake guru Rose Levy Berenbaum's new book, Rose's Heavenly Cakes), but as elegant as the texture was, I felt the pumpkin was lost in all the unctuous dairy—the squash was essentially a sunny food coloring. I tend to prefer pumpkin desserts that have at least as much pumpkin as cream in them—like Claudia Fleming's pumpkin clafouti. (When I made it, I actually goosed the quantity of pumpkin puree by another one-third of a cup.) It has an old-fashioned vibe that seems right for the potbellied squash.

Sugar, on the other hand, is good.

Pumpkin preserves are a little-explored territory, but they are among my favorite ways to get a sweet autumnal flavor hit. I cooked up a couple of jars of French pumpkin-lemon jam, which pits tiny cubes of pumpkin against the bright tang of lemon zest, flesh, and juice. (Mine was from an old French cookbook, but similar to this recipe.) In a darker mode, there is a Mexican spoon sweet made with pumpkin, raw sugar (piloncillo), and anise seeds, which is dark magic served over ice cream. (If you don't feel like cooking it yourself, you can find a similar flavor in arrop, the Spanish pumpkin preserve.)

In general, don't drink pumpkins (with one exception).

American microbrew drinkers seem to go nuts for a seasonal ale, and I tasted three pumpkin beers over the course of the week (this Elysian one was my favorite, if you can call it that). While I didn't hate any of them, they had a sort of tinny vegetal backnote that turned me off (and I found the inevitable spices a little distracting). But the pumpkin brews were nectar compared with my one and only pumpkin latte from Starbucks, a sweet, frothy, orange affair that tasted sugary and pinched at the same time, like a potable scented holiday candle. There is one exception to my liquid pumpkin rule: It actually works in smoothies. I tried a commercial pumpkin protein drink after a long run and didn't hate it, despite my historic disdain for sports beverages. Even better was the one I made for myself out of canned pumpkin, plain yogurt, maple syrup, milk, and a whisper of nutmeg.

Pumpkin bread will change your life.

OK, that may be overstating it, but for me, pumpkin shines most in a slightly sweet bready environment (including cakes). I whipped up this teacake/bread recipe from a terrific Seattle bakery, and it was so good—really squashy, just the right amount of sweet indulgence, and lots of crunchy nuts and seeds to glam it up. I also loved slightly sweet, yeasted pumpkin dinner rolls from one of my all-time favorite cookbook authors, Bert Greene. Fortified with pumpkin, a dash of whole-wheat flour, and maple syrup, they had a more muted pumpkin presence, but they were jolly, fragrant, and warm. They are such an inessential but delightful little treat that they might be the ideal gift-in-hand for the Thanksgiving host who has taken on the rest of the meal unassisted.

Don't overlook the seeds or oil.

Toasted pumpkin seeds bring green color and crunch to granolas, breads (like the ones above), soups, or an empty snack bowl. I recently had a spectacular pumpkin danish at New York's Bouchon Bakery that fairly bristled with seeds. And loden-green pumpkin seed oil is a fancy Austrian specialty that adds a distinctive brooding nuttiness to salads or bread.

Don't take pumpkin too seriously. ( slate.com )

READ MORE - It's Thanksgiving. Where should you put your pumpkin?

Could you marry a man you didn't love? These five women did - for VERY different reasons. So how have their relationships fared since?

Could you marry a man you didn't love? These five women did - for VERY different reasons. So how have their relationships fared since?

I wanted to please my parents

Diane Pulford, 52, from Peterborough, runs her own jewellery business. She has one son, Michael, 29, and is single. She says:

My wedding day in June 1977 was gloriously warm and sunny and I remember thinking that being cooped up in a church and hotel was a massive waste.

I even said to my mother, Florence: ‘I hope you’re happy, I can think of better things to do with my time.'

Under pressure: Diane Pulford married Tom in 1977

'Carol, my older sister who’d made my wedding dress, was horrified and told me not to be so selfish and to think of all the people who’d gone to so much trouble to make the day perfect.

'I was 19 years old at the time — in hindsight, far too young to marry — and my fiancé, Tony, was 21.

'He was a lovely, polite and kind young man, but he didn’t make my heart flutter. I liked him enormously, but I didn’t love him.

'My father, Bill, was an old-fashioned, working-class man. He’d tease me about having my head in the clouds and his mantra was: ‘Love doesn’t pay the bills.’

'I met Tony when I was a filing clerk at the firm he worked for. He was well spoken, middle-class and had an engineering degree. In other words, he was the ‘man with prospects’ my mother was forever talking about.

'Mum was always on my case, telling me I’d be a fool to let him go and how I’d be set up for life if we married.

'My previous boyfriend, who I’d been crazy about, had hurt me badly by cheating on me with my best friend.

'Tony never let me down and, after months of nagging, I began to think that my parents were right and I should take him off the market.

'So, after just four months of dating, we were engaged. Nine months later we married in front of 100 people.

'On the day I felt like a fraud. Tony talked excitedly about our future plans, while I felt flat and numb.

'We moved into a lovely three-bedroom house and I busied myself with the decorating, cooking and trying to be a good wife.

'But I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. I felt lonely and unhappy and would deliberately provoke rows so I could justify storming off to stay at my parents’ house.

'After 18 months, Tony came home from work and said: ‘This isn’t working, is it?’ I moved out that night and we divorced three years later.

'I don’t blame my parents, they just wanted the best for me. I was the one who thought dependability and financial security could make up for love.

'I spent the next 20 years with Mark, the father of my son, but we never married. I’m single now and happy to stay so.'

I married a man I'd just met

Lisa Mahon, 31, is an accounts manger. She lives in Witham, Essex, with her husband Edward, 40, a sales executive, with their daughter Georgia, three, and her son Dion, five, from a previous relationship. The couple have been married for four years. She says:

'I married Edward less than a week after meeting him. My friends were shocked because they never thought of me as a reckless person.

'It all began in the spring of 2007 when I had split from Dion’s father. Feeling lonely one evening I was surfing the internet and stumbled across Edward’s blog. It included extracts of his poetry, which I found wonderfully romantic and moving.

Cyber dating: Lisa Mahon married Edward within six days of meeting him following getting to know each other over the internet

'I saw that he was in Atlanta, U.S., but I still sent him a message complimenting his writing. He replied and we struck up some email banter. We then began talking daily on the phone and realised there was some real chemistry.

'After four months, Edward asked me to fly to Atlanta to marry him. Most of my friends and family were horrified but sometimes in life you have to go with your gut instinct.

'In November 2007, I travelled to Atlanta and knew instantly that we were going to have an amazing life. I didn’t love him then — because I think that takes time — but I knew it would come.

'Six days after I arrived we married at a local register office with no guests. The rashness only made it all the more exciting.

'Everyone back home was highly suspicious, accusing Edward of being everything from a crook to a visa hunter. But the fact was that he was financially secure and desperate for me to live in the U.S., but I didn’t want to move Dion away from his grandparents.

'Five months after our wedding, Edward was able to move to the UK after securing a work visa. He got a well-paid job straight away and our daughter, Georgia, arrived in April 2009. Quite simply, he’s the best husband and father I could wish for.

'I know they say ‘marry in haste, repent at leisure’ but that won’t be the case with us.

'The people who were so judgmental have now been forced to admit that we make a fantastic couple.'

He was desperately ill and I felt sorry for him

Patricia Beaumont, 35, and husband Jason, 39, live with their two children, Joseph, 14, and Joshua, 11, in Ipswich, Suffolk. Patricia is a housewife, while Jason runs a decorating company. They have been married for 14 years. She says:

'I was six months pregnant when I walked down the aisle in the summer of 1997 in a dress that had been altered to hide my growing bump.

'At that moment, I felt only anger and resentment at being cajoled into a wedding I didn’t want and a baby I hadn’t planned for — all because of my fiance’s serious and unexpected illness.

'I was 19 when I met Jason in a nightclub. He was good looking and fun, but marriage and babies were not even on my mind.

Baby love? Patricia was 19 and pregnant when she married cancer-stricken Joseph

'We’d been dating ten months when he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma — a very rare cancer that affects the spine and back.

'He underwent radiotherapy to shrink the tumours and doctors told him the treatment could leave him infertile. Neither of us knew that I was in the early stages of pregnancy.

'The thought of a childless future nursing a sick man terrified me and, as heartless as it sounds, I told Jason I wanted to end it.

'Shortly afterwards, I began to feel unwell. When a friend suggested I take a pregnancy test, I agreed just to remove the possibility.

'Sure enough it came back positive.

'I fled to Greece to try to clear my head but Jason called me pleading for us to marry and raise our child together.

'At that stage, he was still seriously ill and I had visions of being a widowed single mother. I felt in absolute despair.

'When I returned to the UK, Jason and his mother had booked the church!

'I’d have been the cruellest woman in the world to cancel the wedding and not continue with the pregnancy when it would make Jason so happy.

'The first year of our marriage was hellish — Jason just wanted us to be a family whereas I felt that marriage and motherhood had been forced upon me.

'Unbelievably, his treatment did not render him infertile and our second son Joshua arrived three years after Joseph.

'We were approaching our fourth anniversary when Jason’s cancer returned with a vengeance. His underwent a bone marrow transplant but his prognosis was grim.

'Suddenly, the thought of losing this wonderful, caring husband and father was unbearable.

'I realised then — for the first time — how deeply I loved him.

'I stayed by his bed for six weeks telling him over and over that I loved him — trying to make up for all the times I’d never said it before.

'He pulled through and has been cancer free for the past nine years.

'Despite our shaky start, I now adore him and believe we will be together for ever.'

My family chose my husband

Anita Singh, 42, a business advisor, has been married to civil engineer Amarjit Singh, 39, for 11 years. They don’t have any children and live in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. She says:

'Amarjit and I had only met twice before we married in April 2000. Our match was arranged for us by friends and family. I never questioned it and trusted that the people who knew us and loved us would get it right.

Slow burn: Anita and Amarjit married less than a week after meeting after being set up by their families

'Of course, we didn’t love each other at the time but I’d no doubt we could make it work.

'My parents came to Britain from India in the Sixties to run a Post Office and I was born here, along with my three younger siblings. Although my parents had a successful arranged marriage, they never forced us into one.

'I went to university and had a very British childhood and adolescence, with lots of fun and freedom — but I was always knew my parents would like me to marry an Indian man.

'By the time I reached the age of 31, and was still single, they started dropping not very subtle hints about me leaving it a bit late.

'Mum’s relatives back in India were horrified that I was still unmarried in my 30s and took it upon themselves to set me up.

'There is nothing an Indian auntie likes better than a spot of match-making.

'At the time I thought: ‘Why not?’

'I didn’t have to go through with it and men weren’t exactly falling over themselves to date me. My mum was 19 when she married my dad and their union is unbelievably deep, genuine and strong. On a holiday to India I was introduced to Amarjit. He came from a good, modern-thinking family. He was educated, polite and very handsome but, even so, after our first meeting I wasn’t blown away.

'My family kept telling me what a wonderful husband he’d make and how our zodiac charts showed the best match they had ever seen.

'So, two week’s later, we announced our engagement. My mother is never wrong about anything and I trusted her to get this right too

'After an amazing traditional wedding in India, we came back to the UK. My British friends were shocked. And I won’t deny the first three years were very testing — we were, after all, both living with strangers.

'But slowly, day by day, as I got to know Amarjit’s kindness and humour, love grew.

'Now he is not only my best friend, he is my one and only true love.'

I yearned for a baby

Andrea Pierce, 44, is an office administrator. She has one son, Tom, 11, and lives in Windsor, Berks. She says:

'Justin and I had been dating for four years when he proposed. We were walking in a beautiful field when he suddenly dropped to one knee and offered me a sapphire and diamond engagement ring.

'It should have been the most romantic moment of my life but all I could think was: ‘I wouldn’t have chosen that ring.’

Regrets: Andrea Pierce had been dating Justin for four years before he proposed

'I was approaching 30 and my biological clock was ticking loudly. All my friends had married and had kids and I was feeling left on the shelf.

'Justin was nice looking, mature and had a good, well-paid job in the property business.

'I didn’t love him but I, foolishly, thought he offered my last hope of becoming a mother.

'So I agreed to marry him and six months later, in July 1995, and in front of 70 guests, I vowed to become his wife.

'We moved into a fantastic four-bedroom detached house in the country and, aged 33, I eventually gave birth to my beautiful son, Tom.

'Even though I had yearned for a child, I did not adapt to the role of mum very easily. I struggled to cope and became very unhappy.

'Justin was a good man and provider, but the feeling of love I hoped would come never did.

'Six years after we married I went to the Henley Regatta and got chatting to a man who made my stomach lurch in a way my husband never did. I knew then I could not stay with Justin. Two weeks later, he moved out.

'Needless to say, the relationship with the man from Henley petered out. I feel guilty for the way I’ve treated Justin and regret throwing it all away for a meaningless fling — but I only have myself to blame.' ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Could you marry a man you didn't love? These five women did - for VERY different reasons. So how have their relationships fared since?

Population near ground zero doubles since 2000

Population near ground zero doubles since 2000 – After the Sept. 11 attacks, there were grim questions about the future of the shaken, dust-covered neighborhoods around the World Trade Center. Would residents flee uptown or to the suburbs? Would the epic job of rebuilding lower Manhattan be too much to bear? Who would want to live so close to a place associated with such horror?

As it turns out, plenty of folks.

Census figures released last week show that the number of people living near ground zero has swelled by about 23,000 since 2000, making it one of the fastest-growing places in the city.

Virginia Lam, a publicist and former City Hall operative who moved into a newly converted residential building on Wall Street in 2006, said the site is a source of inspiration, rather than fear or gloom.

New York's lower Manhattan from air - FILE - This April 20, 2010 file photo shows New York's lower Manhattan from the air. After the 9/11 attacks, there were grim predictions about the future of the shaken, dust-covered neighborhoods around the World Trade Center. Who would want to live so close to a place linked to so much disaster and despair? As it turns out, plenty of folks. Census figures released last week show that the number of people living in the area around ground zero has swelled by about 23,000 since 2000, making it one of the fastest growing places in the city

"It's pretty amazing," she said of the new towers rising from the 16-acre hole created by the attacks. "I feel like, being a New Yorker who was here on 9/11, and who has worked for the Fire Department and for the city, I think it is always in the back of my mind, but it's not something that dominates my thinking. I go about living my life."

About 45,750 people now live in the part of Manhattan south of Chambers Street, which encompasses ground zero. That is more than twice as many as there were during the last census.

There was also significant growth a little farther uptown. In all, 82,137 people were counted as living south of Canal Street, 15 blocks north of the trade center. That is an increase of 43 percent from 2000 in an area that includes the Financial District, Battery Park City, a section of tenement-packed Chinatown and the celebrity-studded streets of TriBeCa, which is short for "Triangle Below Canal."

The change around Wall Street has been especially remarkable given the area's history as a financial hub, rather than a residential district.

One by one, bank headquarters have moved elsewhere, and millions of square feet of office space have been converted to homes — a change spurred partly by government incentives intended to help revive downtown after Sept. 11.

"It's astounding," said Julie Menin, head of the local community board. "Many people thought after 9/11 that people wouldn't remain in Lower Manhattan. Not only did people stay, they came in droves."

New Yorkers have been well aware of the change. In the shell-shocked months after the attacks, the Financial District became a ghost town when workers left for the day. Now it is teeming with people around the clock.

Grocery stores have opened. Three new schools have opened up in four years. Briefcase-carrying stockbrokers now share sidewalk space with kids in strollers. A string of new apartment towers has been built along West Street, a short distance from the trade center site.

The area isn't finished growing, either. Near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, work was recently completed on the tallest apartment tower in the Western Hemisphere, a 76-story, 900-unit skyscraper designed by the architect Frank Gehry.

Growth downtown has far exceeded the rate elsewhere in the city. The 2010 census put the city's population at 8.18 million, up 2.1 percent from 2000.

People have been lured to Manhattan's southern tip by a number of things. Battery Park City, the planned community created on landfill at the edge of the Hudson River in the 1980s, is cut off from the car traffic that surges through the rest of Manhattan and is ringed by playgrounds and esplanades with exhilarating views of the harbor.

Before the attacks it was a work in progress, with a large section still unbuilt. Over the past decade, though, it has matured and filled up, finally becoming the community its designers envisioned in the 1970s.

Several of the area's public schools have a solid reputation. The area still isn't on par with other parts of the city when it comes to amenities like street parking or places to buy fresh vegetables, but things have been improving.

New Battery Park City resident Theresa Purcell said its isolation — it is one of the few places in the city that really feels as if it is on an island — is one of the things that attracted her.

"It is like a hidden little community," she said. "You are in the big, bad city," but still a "little world away."

Across much of the area, there are few remaining signs of the damage done by the terror attacks. Even the tumult of construction at the trade center site barely interrupts the daily flow of residents, office workers and tourists through the neighborhood.

"People should be proud of the fact that we rebuilt this neighborhood," Menin said. New Yorkers could have abandoned their experiment in downtown living after 9/11, but it didn't happen. "I think just the opposite happened. It proved our resilience." ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Population near ground zero doubles since 2000

Nuclear plant downplayed tsunami risk

Nuclear plant downplayed tsunami risk – In planning their defense against a killer tsunami, the people running Japan's now-hobbled nuclear power plant dismissed important scientific evidence and all but disregarded 3,000 years of geological history, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The misplaced confidence displayed by Tokyo Electric Power Co. was prompted by a series of overly optimistic assumptions that concluded the Earth couldn't possibly release the level of fury it did two weeks ago, pushing the six-reactor Fukushima Dai-ichi complex to the brink of multiple meltdowns.

Instead of the reactors staying dry, as contemplated under the power company's worst-case scenario, the plant was overrun by a torrent of water much higher and stronger than the utility argued could occur, according to an AP analysis of records, documents and statements from researchers, the utility and the Japan's national nuclear safety agency.

And while TEPCO and government officials have said no one could have anticipated such a massive tsunami, there is ample evidence that such waves have struck the northeast coast of Japan before — and that it could happen again along the culprit fault line, which runs roughly north to south, offshore, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) east of the plant.

A protester wears a mask during an antinuclear rally in Tokyo Sunday, March 27, 2011. Leaked water in Unit 2 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant measured 10 million times higher than usual radioactivity levels when the reactor is operating normally, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita told reporters in Tokyo

TEPCO officials say they had a good system for projecting tsunamis. They declined to provide more detailed explanations, saying they were focused on the ongoing nuclear crisis.

What is clear: TEPCO officials discounted important readings from a network of GPS units that showed that the two tectonic plates that create the fault were strongly "coupled," or stuck together, thus storing up extra stress along a line hundreds of miles long. The greater the distance and stickiness of such coupling, experts say, the higher the stress buildup — pressure that can be violently released in an earthquake.

That evidence, published in scientific journals starting a decade ago, represented the kind of telltale characteristics of a fault being able to produce the truly overwhelming quake — and therefore tsunami — that it did.

On top of that, TEPCO modeled the worst-case tsunami using its own computer program instead of an internationally accepted prediction method.

It matters how Japanese calculate risk. In short, they rely heavily on what has happened to figure out what might happen, even if the probability is extremely low. If the view of what has happened isn't accurate, the risk assessment can be faulty.

That approach led to TEPCO's disregard of much of Japan's tsunami history.

In postulating the maximum-sized earthquake and tsunami that the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex might face, TEPCO's engineers decided not to factor in quakes earlier than 1896. That meant the experts excluded a major quake that occurred more than 1,000 years ago — a tremor followed by a powerful tsunami that hit many of the same locations as the recent disaster.

A TEPCO reassessment presented only four months ago concluded that tsunami-driven water would push no higher than 18 feet (5.7 meters) once it hit the shore at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex. The reactors sit up a small bluff, between 14 and 23 feet (4.3 and 6.3 meters) above TEPCO's projected high-water mark, according to a presentation at a November seismic safety conference in Japan by TEPCO civil engineer Makoto Takao.

"We assessed and confirmed the safety of the nuclear plants," Takao asserted.

However, the wall of water that thundered ashore two weeks ago reached about 27 feet (8.2 meters) above TEPCO's prediction. The flooding disabled backup power generators, located in basements or on first floors, imperiling the nuclear reactors and their nearby spent fuel pools.

___

The story leading up to the Tsunami of 2011 goes back many, many years — several millennia, in fact.

The Jogan tsunami of 869 displayed striking similarities to the events in and around the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors. The importance of that disaster, experts told the AP, is that the most accurate planning for worst-case scenarios is to study the largest events over the longest period of time. In other words, use the most data possible.

The evidence shows that plant operators should have known of the dangers — or, if they did know, disregarded them.

As early as 2001, a group of scientists published a paper documenting the Jogan tsunami. They estimated waves of nearly 26 feet (8 meters) at Soma, about 25 miles north of the plant. North of there, they concluded that a surge from the sea swept sand more than 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) inland across the Sendai plain. The latest tsunami pushed water at least about 1 1/2 miles (2 kilometers) inland.

The scientists also found two additional layers of sand and concluded that two additional "gigantic tsunamis" had hit the region during the past 3,000 years, both presumably comparable to Jogan. Carbon dating couldn't pinpoint exactly when the other two hit, but the study's authors put the range of those layers of sand at between 140 B.C. and A.D. 150, and between 670 B.C. and 910 B.C.

In a 2007 paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Pure and Applied Geophysics, two TEPCO employees and three outside researchers explained their approach to assessing the tsunami threat to Japan's nuclear reactors, all 54 of which sit near the sea or ocean.

To ensure the safety of Japan's coastal power plants, they recommended that facilities be designed to withstand the highest tsunami "at the site among all historical and possible future tsunamis that can be estimated," based on local seismic characteristics.

But the authors went on to write that tsunami records before 1896 could be less reliable because of "misreading, misrecording and the low technology available for the measurement itself." The TEPCO employees and their colleagues concluded, "Records that appear unreliable should be excluded."

Two years later, in 2009, another set of researchers concluded that the Jogan tsunami had reached 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) inland at Namie, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) north of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

The warning from the 2001 report about the 3,000-year history would prove to be most telling: "The recurrence interval for a large-scale tsunami is 800 to 1,100 years. More than 1,100 years have passed since the Jogan tsunami, and, given the reoccurrence interval, the possibility of a large tsunami striking the Sendai plain is high."

___

The fault involved in the Fukushima Dai-ichi tsunami is part of what is known as a subduction zone. In subduction zones, one tectonic plate dives under another. When the fault ruptures, the sea floor snaps upward, pushing up the water above it and potentially creating a tsunami. Subduction zones are common around Japan and throughout the Pacific Ocean region.

TEPCO's latest calculations were started after a magnitude-8.8 subduction zone earthquake off the coast of Chile in February 2010.

In such zones over the past 50 years, earthquakes of magnitude 9.0 or greater have occurred in Alaska, Chile and Indonesia. All produced large tsunamis.

When two plates are locked across a large area of a subduction zone, the potential for a giant earthquake increases. And those are the exact characteristics of where the most recent quake occurred.

TEPCO "absolutely should have known better," said Dr. Costas Synolakis, a leading American expert on tsunami modeling and an engineering professor at the University of Southern California. "Common sense," he said, should have produced a larger predicted maximum water level at the plant.

TEPCO's tsunami modelers did not judge that, in a worst-case scenario, the strong subduction and coupling conditions present off the coast of Fukushima Dai-ichi could produce the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred. Instead, it figured the maximum at 8.6 magnitude, meaning the March 11 quake was four times as powerful as the presumed maximum.

Shogo Fukuda, a TEPCO spokesman, said that 8.6 was the maximum magnitude entered into the TEPCO internal computer modeling for Fukushima Dai-ichi.

Another TEPCO spokesman, Motoyasu Tamaki, used a new buzzword, "sotegai," or "outside our imagination," to describe what actually occurred.

U.S. tsunami experts said that one reason the estimates for Fukushima Dai-ichi were so low was the way Japan calculates risk. Because of the island nation's long history of killer waves, Japanese experts often will look at what has happened — then project forward what is likely to happen again.

Under longstanding U.S. standards that are gaining popularity around the world, risk assessments typically scheme up a worst-case scenario based on what could happen, then design a facility like a nuclear power plant to withstand such a collection of conditions — factoring in just about everything short of an extremely unlikely cataclysm, like a large meteor hitting the ocean and creating a massive wave that kills hundreds of thousands.

In the early 1990s, Harry Yeh, now a tsunami expert and engineering professor at Oregon State University, was helping assess potential threats to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the central California coast in the United States. During that exercise, he said, researchers considered a worst-case scenario involving a significantly larger earthquake than had ever been recorded there.

And then a tsunami was added. And in that Diablo Canyon model, the quake hit during a monster storm that was already pushing onto the shore higher waves than had ever been measured at the site.

In contrast, when TEPCO calculated its high-water mark at 18 feet (5.7 meters), the anticipated maximum earthquake was in the same range as others recorded off the coast of Fukushima Dai-ichi — and the only assumption about the water level was that the tsunami arrived at high tide.

Which, as is abundantly clear now, could not have been more wrong. ( Associated Press. )

READ MORE - Nuclear plant downplayed tsunami risk

Why Do Animals Sleep?

Why Do Animals Sleep? - That feeling when you wake up fully rested, crisp and fresh, is nirvana. Sleep is essential part of our daily lives. Stop sleeping and your body starts losing function, mental clarity evaporates, and you eventually die. Sleep seems to be essential for all animals, given that every animal studied has been found to sleep. Insects, fish, birds, and I all participate in this daily phenomenon. But why do we sleep? What purpose does it serve? The truth is, we don’t really know. We know loads about the neuronal pathways that define the various stages of sleep. We also know what happens when we are sleep-deprived (think of staying up all night for a final exam). But the true purpose of this curious state that we enter nightly remains mysterious.

Many researchers are working on solving this enigma through various clinical, experimental and observational studies on humans and animals. For years, researchers have recorded sleep in animals ranging from mice to elephants. But these animals have always been captive, caged or otherwise restrained. Our lab at the Max Planck Institute is the only group studying sleep in wild, unrestrained animals. There is enormous variation in the natural world, with some animals sleeping only two hours a day, while others require 20 hours. To properly understand this variation we have to study them in their natural habitat. It’s not that surprising that the behavior of captive animals is significantly different from that of their wild counterparts. Imagine if I studied sleep only in people on airplanes, and used that to infer that this is their “normal” sleeping pattern.

We are hardly the first people to suspect there are differences in the sleep patterns of wild and captive animals. We are just the first to have the technology to effectively study it in the wild. The key component to recording sleep is the electroencephalogram, or EEG. Typically an EEG is recorded with a computer, various wires and tiny voltage sensors that detect and record the minute electrical charges of brain waves. Strapping a Y2K-era laptop to a wild animal to record sleep is impractical. However, recent advances in miniaturized circuitry have yielded EEG loggers that are 1.5 grams. That’s about half the weight of a penny, and can be attached to an animal with minimal effect on its behavior. But even with these elegantly tiny loggers, there is one last hurdle to pass. We have to recatch our wild study animal and retrieve the logger with its onboard data module. Therefore, we have to be clever about which species we try to work with. My first animal of choice: the fierce three-toed sloth.

Ryan Tisdale A male sloth relaxing with me after a low-stress catch.

I began my scientific career as an undergraduate radio-tracking two- and three-toed sloths in Panama, so they were the natural animal to start with. It’s also amusing to casually mention to someone that I study sleep in sloths (the jokes are endless). As far as a research animal, sloths are a good choice. They are large and docile, can be caught by hand (no trapping or netting, as long as you can climb 100 feet into the canopy), and are certifiably the world’s slowest mammal. They were also assumed to sleep an inordinate amount of time, which is scientifically intriguing. Why have these animals decided to become so lethargic and lazy, spending all day in the treetops lounging, sleeping and relaxing?

Bryson Voirin Sloth or termite nest? This one is a sloth, which is obvious only by the presence of hair. I have identified plenty of “sloths” from the ground, only to climb up 80 feet to discover it was a stinging insect nest.

Armed with these advanced new micro loggers, I’ve been studying sleep in Panamanian sloths for the past three years. My first finding was that despite their being the world’s slowest mammal, the notion that they are “slow and therefore easy to catch” is false. Simply finding a sloth is an accomplishment. Sloths have an extremely cryptic lifestyle. Their evolutionary strategy is to never be seen or noticed. They typically masquerade in the canopy as a termite nest or clump of leaves, refusing to react to any movement or noise on the ground. The rain forest is full of stationary termite nests and clumps of leaves quietly minding their own business in the trees. They’re everywhere. The key to identifying one as a sloth is to painfully examine every single clump with binoculars and look for the presence of hair. Leaves and nests are traditionally absent of hair, so hairy nests are probably sloths. But even then, seeing one requires luck. It’s like looking for the one sloth that left its “A” game at home that day.

Ryan Tisdale Catching a sloth almost always requires me to climb up a tree. In this case, the tree was hollow and would wiggle like a rubber band in the wind. I was glad to be out of that tree as quickly as possible.

After tirelessly searching and finally locating the camouflaged little Zen master, physically catching it is the next feat. The sloths I find seem to always be at the top of the tallest tree, out on the thinnest of limbs. To climb up into the canopy, I shoot a line around a strong branch using an eight-foot slingshot that would make Dennis the Menace quite jealous. Then, after hauling up a climbing rope, I rig up my mechanical ascenders and inch my way skyward. Once I am at a similar altitude as the sloth, I swing, crawl and otherwise traverse my way through the canopy and grab hold of the sloth, and in a dramatic display of aerial acrobatics I rappel down the tree with the sloth and attach the sleep logger and radio collar. I release the sloth back at its home tree, where it is free to carry on being a sloth. Ten days later, using the radio collar’s signal to find the sloth, I repeat this aerial display again, this time to remove all the hardware from the sloth.

Sloth catching is not without its risks. I once ended up in the hospital after being bitten by a sloth (it actually happened very fast!). When hospital staffers were finally able to control their laughter, the only question the doctor had for me was whether I was sleeping when it bit me (this reignited the howls from the entire emergency room). I’ve fallen out of trees, broken bones, been stung by every insect imaginable, gotten seriously lost in the forest, and experienced numerous other mini-disasters that come with being a field scientist. More often, there are amazing experiences. Seeing harpy eagles, ocelots and stunning landscapes, and being up close and personal with wildlife is what I dreamed about as a kid. I wouldn’t trade the experiences or job for anything, both the good and bad.

The results I am getting from the sloth studies not only are new and exciting, but are also creating a new approach to the understanding of sleep in animals. Wild sloths sleep only 9.5 hours a day, while laboratory sloths sleep more than 16 hours. Why? We have also found that some sloths have selective diets that influence the strength of their brain waves and alter their sleep intensity. Are they intentionally altering their sleep patterns through their diet? Some sloth populations are early risers, yet others are up late at night. Could the risk of predation affect the hours they are awake? Working on sleep in wild animals on their home turf, we are just beginning to address a whole new world of questions.

For two months this dry season, I am leaving the sloths on the mainland behind and trying to record sleep in magnificent frigate birds on Isla Iguana. The colony out here is resident through the middle of May, so I have until then to complete the study. As is the case with “slothing,” the hardest part of the study is actually getting the animal. The colony here has around 5,000 birds, so finding them isn’t the issue. It’s catching and recatching them that poses the true challenge ( nytimes.com )

READ MORE - Why Do Animals Sleep?

Monkeys like to keep their chatter brief - just like humans

Monkeys like to keep their chatter brief - just like humans. Monkeys like to keep their conversations short and sweet very much like humans, experts revealed today.

British researchers studied the Formosan macaque of Taiwan, which has 35 different calls. They found that everyday chatter consisted of the shortest of these, while the longest calls only got an occasional airing.

Formosan macaque monkeys appear to use the law of brevity in their communication just like humans

In the same way our most commonly used words, such as 'a', 'the' and 'of', do not take long to say.

This phenomenon is known as the 'law of brevity' and could shed more light on the origins of human language,

Dr Stuart Semple, of Roehampton University, and his colleagues describe this discovery in a paper in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters.

The importance of keeping things brief cannot be under-estimated for these monkeys, who not only save energy by using shorter calls, but are also less likely to attract the unwanted attention of predators.

The new research adds to a growing number of studies indicating that monkey talk may not be as different from our own language as previously believed.

Dr Semple said: 'This work reveals a fundamental similarity between humans and monkeys in the way information is coded in their vocal communication.

'The law of brevity makes communication more efficient and this seems to hold across all languages.' ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Monkeys like to keep their chatter brief - just like humans

Newlywed Rules to Ignore

Newlywed Rules to Ignore. Ever feel like there are expectations you're supposed to live up to as newlyweds? And if you don't buy into them, you're not doing the whole married thing right? Well, we say forget that. Here are some so-called rules you shouldn't think twice about ignoring.

Rule 1: You have to be Mr. and Mrs. Same Name/Same Account/Same Life
Ignore it.

Maybe your friends were psyched when they finally got to use return address stickers featuring their new last name. But there's no set rule on how you two should go about merging—you have to do what's right for you, and that could mean keeping your name and maintaining your own accounts. If you're on the fence, consider using a joint account for all your household bills, while maintaining personal checking and savings accounts for all your other expenses. Just one quick trip to the bank, and you're done. No identity crisis necessary.

Rule 2: Once you're married, you need to put a five-year plan into place
Ignore it.

Some couples have their entire future mapped out. "We'll probably move to the burbs by '09, and then we'll have to start thinking about having kids—two girls and a boy—and buttering up to preschools in the area." Alrighty then. Just because pals may have a master plan—including the month they want to conceive—doesn't meanyou should, especially since life rarely goes according to plan anyway.

Rule 3: You need to phase out your individual friends and meet new couples
Ignore it.

Why is it that as soon as you get hitched, you're expected to be hot on the trail of other duos to befriend? You're still the same people you were before you got married, so don't buy into the pressure to fill some arbitrary couples quota. The individual friends you've had for years—the ones that were with you long before your spouse showed up—are still a big part of your lives, even if they're at different stages.

Rule 4: You should be spending all your free time together
Ignore it.

Having quality time together is important, but you had a full life before getting hitched, and you still should now (hello, that's why you found each other interesting in the first place). Schedule more nights doing your own thing or take a short vacation if the opportunity comes up. Yes, your other half will survive -- and may even thank you! ( thenest.com )

READ MORE - Newlywed Rules to Ignore

Daytime Date Ideas

Daytime Date Ideas

Watch the Sun Rise

You’ve probably watched the sun set many, many times, but when was the last time the two of you caught the sunrise? Check the time online at SunriseSunset.com, grab a blanket and a thermos of hot cocoa, and enjoy the calmness of the morning hours together.

Street or County Fair

Whether it’s a pie bake-off on a farm or a falafel stand in the city, street and county fairs are great places to sample food and soak up the local flavor. During the holiday season, check out craft fairs too. You just might find some cool gifts.

Hiking

Even for couples living in a city, a wooded area or hiking trail is almost always within a 30-minute drive. Pack your hiking boots or a comfortable pair of sneakers, two large bottles of water and a small snack (unless you’ll be hiking all day, in which case, go all out with sandwiches). Find trails near you on Trails.com.

Bike Ride and Picnic

Bike to a scenic locale in your area – visit MapMyRide.com to find routes – and have a picnic at your destination. Spread a blanket on a flat spot, and dine on fresh fruit, chocolates, cheese slices, and other easy-to-carry-while-biking foods.

Ride in Style

Rent your dream car for the day from a service like Zipcar, which has rentals ranging from Mini Coopers to Mustang convertibles

Have a Spa Day

Book couples massages and other relaxing treatments at a local salon. Spend the day relaxing and getting pampered together.

DJ Lessons

This one’s a twofer: not only will you two learn how to spin on turntables and mix your own beats, you’ll be able to provide the entertainment at your next party.

White Water Rafting

Courses range in intensity from Class I (essentially smooth sailing with no experience required) to Class VI (picture The River Wild). Determine whether you want a leisurely drift or a white-knuckle thrill ride, then bon voyage.

Volunteer

Get your butts off the sofa and do some volunteer work together. It’s a great way to bond while doing something worthwhile. Carry that euphoric feel-good vibe home and get charitable between the sheets.

Rent a Boat

If you live near a marina, chances are you can rent a boat for a day and go for a sail. If you’re not the sailing type, go for a boat ride on a local waterway. Hint: pack a picnic! ( thenest.com )

READ MORE - Daytime Date Ideas

Viruses vs. bacteria

Viruses vs. bacteria. Bacteriophage (or 'phage' for short) therapy, is an alternative to antibiotic treatment, and has recently been gaining favour and appeal amongst western scientists.

This treatment involves injecting or applying a cocktail of bacteriophages, which consist of a virus that attacks specific infection-causing bacteria. In short, the bacteriaphages "eat" the bacterium concerned.

Phage therapy is currently the subject of mainstream research and application in Georgia in the former Soviet Union.

History

The history of phage therapy can be traced as far back as 1896. M.E Hankin reportedly witnessed the antibacterial action of the Indian rivers Ganga and Yamuna against the bacterial strain Vibrio Chlorae. Hankin’s findings are said to have explained the low numbers of cholera cases among people who consumed the river water.

In 1915 and 1917, Frederick Twort and Felix d'Hérelle from England reported similar results. It was d'Hérelle who named these ultra-microbes ‘bacteriophages’ (bacteria eaters) and who pioneered the use of phages for treating Shigella dysentery in France. Around the same time, a Georgian by the name of George Eliava was conducting phage research of his own.

Eliava met d'Hérelle at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, after which he established the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, dedicated to the further study of phages.

How they work

Bacteriophages are divided into two types: lytic and lysogenic. References to bacteriophages for therapeutic reasons allude to lytic bacteriophages. Lysogenic phages are not useful for therapeutic purposes.

Phages attach themselves onto bacteria and inject their DNA into the cells. In a matter of minutes, a bacterium becomes a phage factory, producing more and more phages after having corrupted the reproductive mechanism of the bacterium. Eventually the new phages burst through the walls of the cell, destroying the bacterium and continuing the process by spreading to other bacterial cells.

By nature, most phages are ‘bacterium-specific’, meaning that they can only affect specific strains within a species. Phage therapy therefore results in less harm to the body than traditional antibiotic treatment. This also helps prevent secondary infections usually caused by the use of antibiotics.

The manner in which phages are applied depends on the type of condition from which a patient suffers. They can be applied topically, during surgery or orally. They can also be applied by means of injection. The nature of the immune system (that automatically fights against any viruses introduced into the bloodstream or lymphatic system) means that injected bacteriophages are only used on rare occasions, such as when no other method of application would be effective.

Better than antibiotics?

Bacteria eventually grow resistant to antibiotics, but phages are able to change and adapt in ways that make them a constant threat to bacteria. All viruses change and adapt themselves in time, and bacteriophages are no exception. Also, phages have the advantage of being able to penetrate deeper into an infected area than antibiotics can, because phages keep reproducing, unlike antibiotics, which eventually lose efficacy.

On a practical level, phages are more viable than antibiotics for a number of reasons. These include:

• There are almost no serious side-effects (antibiotic use can result in secondary infections).


• Selecting new phages to combat an infection is a much quicker process than finding new antibiotics, which sometimes take up to several years.
• Phages replicate at the site of infection, but antibiotics are eliminated from the body after they’re metabolised.

( health24.com )

READ MORE - Viruses vs. bacteria

Meet your new cousins, the flying lemurs

Meet your new cousins, the flying lemurs. Squirrel-like colugos are the closest living relative of primates. A group of creatures resembling large flying squirrels is the closest living relative of primates, the group that includes apes and humans, according to a new genetic study.

The finding, detailed in the Nov. 2 issue of the journal Science, contradicts a study published earlier this year by another team, which concluded that the squirrel-like colugos are more closely related to Scandentia, a group that includes tree shrews, than to primates.

National University Of Singapore

Found in Southeast Asia, colugos are colloquially called "flying lemurs," although they are not lemurs and they don't truly fly. The animals are larger than flying squirrels but have a similar skin fold, called a patagium, which they use for gliding. Coasting from tree to tree at dusk, they look like furry kites.

Unclear relationships

Colugos belong to a classification of mammals known as Dermopterans. Together with primates and Scandentia, they make up the single taxonomic unit, or "clade," known as Euarchonta (meaning "true ancestors").

The exact evolutionary relationships among the three groups are a topic of debate among scientists. There are three possibilities:

• Colugos and primates shared a common ancestor that split from tree shrews
• Tree shrews and colugos are more closely related to each other than to primates
• Primates and tree shrews are sister groups, and colugos are the odd ones out

A study published in a January issue of the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) used morphological comparisons of the three groups to determine that tree shrews and colugos are more closely related to each other than either is to primates.

A different picture

The new study, based on genetic comparisons, paints a different picture. Jan Janecka of Texas A&M University and colleagues compared rare genetic changes, called indels, in the genomes of members of the three groups. Indels are regions of insertion or deletion in areas of the DNA that code for proteins.

The team found that colugos and primates have seven indels in common. Only one indel matched up between primates and tree shrews, and no indels were shared between tree shrews and colugos.

"In short, these molecular data strongly suggest that colugos are the sister group to primates," said study team member Webb Miller of Penn State University.

In a second experiment, the team fed genetic data from five mammalian groups, including Primates, Dermopterans, and Scandentia, into a computer model to calculate when they diverged. The results suggested Primates, Demopterans and Scandentia shared a common ancestor as far back as 87.9 million years ago, when dinosaurs still walked the Earth.

According to the model, the three groups separated relatively quickly soon after. At 86.2 million years ago, the ancestors of tree shrews split from that of primates and colugos, and primates and colugos went their separate ways about 79.6 million years ago.

Based on the new findings, the team urges an effort to create a draft of the colugos genome. "Colugos are going to be a much more important species to study now that we know their relationship to primates," Miller said.

For selfish reasons

Mary Silcox, an anthropologist at the University of Winnipeg in Canada who was a co-author on the PNAS study had an open mind about the new findings and the final word on the evolutionary relationship between the three Euarchonta groups.

"Even though it's in conflict with our morphological findings that we've published, I'm not totally closed to the idea that we have the branching pattern among the three Eurochonta groups wrong," Silcox told LiveScience.

She added that a genome of colugos would be "spectacularly wonderful," but that the genome of the most ancient living tree shrew, Ptilocercus lowii, is also needed.

Comparing the full genomes of members from all three groups would allow scientists to chart the evolutionary relationships among them with much more confidence, Silcox said.

Why is knowledge of these relationships important? For one, it will help to answer the question of the origins of our own species, Silcox said. "To some extent, to understand where we came from, we need to put that in a larger context of mammalian evolution," she said.

But Silcox also chalks it up partly to vanity. "I think it's because humans are remarkably self-centered animals," she said. "It's because we're more interested in our evolution than we are the evolution of slime molds that we tend to focus on this stuff." ( livescience.com )

READ MORE - Meet your new cousins, the flying lemurs

Sleep Apnea May Cause Nighttime Urination

Sleep Apnea May Cause Nighttime Urination. Many doctors unaware the sleep disorder boosts urine production, experts say

People who wake up during the night to urinate shouldn't automatically blame a urological problem. Sleep apnea, a breathing-related sleep disorder, could be the cause.

A new study suggests that nighttime urination, or nocturia, is comparable to loud snoring as a marker for obstructive sleep apnea, a disorder in which soft tissue in the throat blocks the flow of air into the lungs, disrupting sleep.

Previous studies established a link between nocturia and sleep apnea, a potentially serious condition that affects about 25 percent of U.S. men and 10 percent of U.S. women, the researchers said. But they believe this is among the first to show that screening for nocturia could help doctors identify patients with apnea.

The study also suggests that a common treatment for sleep apnea -- positive airway pressure (PAP) therapy -- can reduce symptoms of nocturia, thereby improving sleep and preventing debilitating falls among elderly people who get out of bed at night to use the bathroom.

PAP involves wearing a pressurized air mask while sleeping.

Typically, doctors screen for apnea by assessing patients' weight (the condition is associated with overweight/obesity) and asking if they snore heavily, notice breathing problems at night or feel tired during the day (because of interrupted sleep). But because many patients, especially those who sleep alone, are unaware that they snore, apnea often goes undiagnosed.

"When you ask people about symptoms like snoring and gasping, they tend to say, 'No, I don't have them'," said study author Edward Romero, research coordinator at the Sleep & Human Health Institute in Albuquerque, N.M. "But it's very easy for them to realize that they wake up at night to go to the bathroom."

One of Romero's co-authors, institute director Dr. Barry Krakow, said doctors and patients are quick to blame nocturia on diabetes, prostate enlargement and other medical conditions with which it is associated. "I see patients all the time who think they're waking up to urinate because they have prostate trouble or a small bladder," Krakow said. "About 80 percent of the time we discover that apnea is the cause of their problem."

Besides nocturia and snoring, symptoms of sleep apnea include daytime drowsiness, memory problems and depression. Untreated sleep apnea can lead to high blood pressure, blood clots and heart disease.

For the study, published online recently in Sleep and Breathing, the researchers reviewed data on 1,007 adults treated at two sleep clinics in New Mexico between 2005 and 2007. Of the participants, 797 were diagnosed with sleep apnea, 777 reported snoring and 839 reported nocturia. Neither snoring nor nocturia was proof of apnea, but the two symptoms were similar in their power to predict it: snoring was reported by 82.6 percent of apnea sufferers, and 84.8 percent of apnea sufferers reported nocturia.

The authors propose further research be conducted to confirm the effectiveness of nocturia as an apnea screening tool.

Mary Umlauf, a professor at the University of Alabama Capstone College of Nursing in Tuscaloosa and a noted nocturia researcher, said the study could play an important role in dispelling "old wives' tales" about nocturia.

"Many health-care providers and ordinary people think of nocturia as a urological or gynecological problem," she said. "They don't understand that sleep apnea can cause the body to produce too much urine at night.

"People who wake up to urinate shouldn't assume that it's my prostate, or 'I'm just old'," she said. (HealthDay News)

READ MORE - Sleep Apnea May Cause Nighttime Urination