"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch."
~ Orson Welles
Image of the day:
BODY~ Muscles, Molecules, and Maple Leaves: The Ontario Exercise Physiology Winter Meeting -- "Do you like your science articles fed to you in easily digested bite-size morsels? Then you're in luck. Dr. L. has taken the highlights of the winter physiology meeting, sprinkled them with some cinnamon, and stuck little toothpicks into each one. Have as many as you like."
~ Programmed For Obesity -- "Obesity is generally discussed in terms of caloric intake (how much a person eats) and energy output (how much a person exercises). However, according to a University of Missouri-Columbia scientist, environmental chemicals found in everyday plastics and pesticides also may influence obesity."
~ Rewarding Fat Rats -- "For animals in the natural world, making the right choice can mean the difference between life and death. When rats and other animals choose the thing that leads to a "reward," such as food, changes happen in the body and the brain. Describing and understanding those changes has been the focus of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) grantee Peter Shizgal for most of his career."
~ Kids shovel down more calories watching TV -- "Watching television disrupts children's' normal response to food -- they will eat more while they're sitting in front of the tube, whether or not they're really hungry."
~ Fertility detection good as pill for contraception -- "A method of natural family planning that closely monitors two indicators of fertility is just as effective as oral contraception in preventing unwanted pregnancies if used correctly, European researchers report." Are you willing to gamble on this approach? Not me.
~ A Man's Belly Fat Prevents Him From Breathing Optimally -- "Apparently, men have larger waistlines, more belly fat and more problems breathing than women, according to a study of 25 morbidly obese adults (those with BMIs above 39)."
~ Cancer Cells More Likely To Genetically Mutate -- "When cells become cancerous, they also become 100 times more likely to genetically mutate than regular cells, researchers have found. The findings may explain why cells in a tumor have so many genetic mutations, but could also be bad news for cancer treatments that target a particular gene controlling cancer malignancy."
PSYCHE
~ Meetings make us dumber, study shows -- "People have a harder time coming up with alternative solutions to a problem when they are part of a group, new research suggests."
~ Don't Advertise During Sexy Programmes - The Viewer Won't Remember -- "People are less able to recall the brand of products advertised during programmes with a lot of sexual content, than if the advert is placed in similar program that has no sexual content."
~ Traumatic memories easier to recall than happy ones -- "Memories of traumatic events are not suppressed by the people who experienced them but can be recalled clearly, according to Canadian researchers." I'm guessing that the higher the intensity of the memory, the more easily it will be remembered due to the more dense neural pattern that results.
~ How 'Naive Cynicism' May Poison Your Relationships -- "Cynicism has its uses. Being suspicious about the motives of others won't leave you gasping when you are tricked. Expecting negative events means you are never disappointed. Anything good is a bonus. But can cynicism go to far? A study by Kruger and Gilovich (1999) suggests it can."
~ Smart Enough To Make Ourselves Sick -- "Why do humans and their primate cousins get more stress-related diseases than any other member of the animal kingdom? The answer, says Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, is that people, apes and monkeys are highly intelligent, social creatures with far too much spare time on their hands."
~ Cross another ability off the "humans only" list [Cognitive Daily] -- "When we learn that an animal can, for example, recognize itself in a mirror, we begin to wonder if we're really so different from the other animals; whether our dominance over the world is really merited. The latest study covering such ground involves the scrub jay, a remarkable bird which hides its food in thousands of caches, remembering where they are and tracking whether each cache has been discovered by a rival bird." Gotta love those corvids.
~ Highly Accomplished People More Prone To Failure Than Others When Under Stress -- "Talented people often choke under pressure because the distraction caused by stress consumes their working memory, a psychologist at the University of Chicago has found."
CULTURE
~ Progress Being Made In Efforts To Stop Female Genital Cutting In Mali -- "Organizations working in Mali to stop female genital cutting -- a practice sometimes referred to as female circumcision or female genital mutilation in which there is a partial or full removal of the labia, clitoris or both -- are beginning to make progress, Afrol News/Daily Nation reports."
~ States are running out of health dollars (AP) -- "Some states are warning that hundreds of thousands of poor children could lose their health insurance if Congress doesn't act soon to come through with more money for the program."
~ Tobacco Companies Obstructed Science, History Professor Says -- "'Doubt is our product,' stated a tobacco industry memo from 1969. For half a century, the tobacco industry tried to muddy the link between smoking and cancer. Now, with that effort long since failed, cigarette producers facing dozens of potentially ruinous lawsuits are once again attempting to manufacture doubt."
~ Roman Catholic Leaders Criticize New York City For Distributing 20M Condoms As Part Of HIV Prevention Efforts -- Dumbasses.
~ Education: Small Wins the Race -- "Students in small classes do better."
~ Nancy Pelosi, flying high -- "Madam Speaker is turning out to be one of the Democrats' best assets."
~ Terrorism Index Up; al Qaeda Rebuilds. –Depressed Yet? -- "The second Terrorism Index was released February 13 and didn't get much press outside the blogosphere. This twice-annual survey takes stock of the war on terrorism by polling "more than 100 of America's top foreign-policy hands." No surprises here: These sage minds conclude that we're losing–and that things are getting worse, not better."
~ The state of the slacker movie -- "There was a time when the most endearing men on film smoked pot for breakfast, rarely saw fit to leave the couch, and espoused homegrown ideologies that linked The Smurfs with Krishna. They were slackers, masters of the art of time suckage, and theirs was a proud and noble calling."
HABITATS
~ Sustainable Aquaculture Critical To Feed The World -- "A scientific panel has revealed that rising global demand for healthy seafood has exceeded wild capture fisheries' ability to provide all fish meals demanded by consumers. Aquaculture -- or the farming of seafood -- is helping to fill the gap between sustainable wild supplies and the public demand for seafood."
~ Hospital group pitches universal insurance -- "A group of U.S. hospitals on Thursday offered a plan to cover the nation's 47 million uninsured, including mandatory coverage for all and subsidies for the working poor."
~ Elements of an effective response to global warming -- "With the release of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, the debate over climate change has noticeably shifted from arguments about the reality of human-induced climate change to a debate over how to address the problem."
~ Chimps Use "Spears" to Hunt Mammals, Study Says -- "For the first time, great apes have been observed making and using tools to hunt mammals, say researchers who documented chimpanzees hunting other primates in Africa." Evolution in action?
~ Atlantic to Pacific feedback discovered -- "French scientists say an exchange of water vapor from the Atlantic to the Pacific might be an important feedback mechanism for abrupt climatic changes."
~ New use for waste cooking oil is found -- "U.S. scientists say waste cooking oil from restaurant deep fryers -- known as "yellow grease" -- could be transformed into therapeutic cosmetics." Yeah, that sounds pleasant.
~ Sea Turtles Shocked by Frigid Gulf Waters -- "Nearly 90 endangered sea turtles rescued after a cold snap left them comatose have been returned to the Gulf of Mexico."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ "Integral" Shamanism -- Gary at Integral in Seattle takes an old post of mine and adds some valuable insights and expansions.
~ The Zero Boss takes on Men's Health: What Scares a Man? Articles Like This.
~ A series of new posts from Mystery of Existence: Fully allowing a sense of a separate self, Exploring a sense of a separate I in three general ways, What I take myself as, is how I experience Existence in general, and Differentiating 3rd and 1st person identities. These are best read from the last one to the first one, the order in which he posted them.
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