"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense."
~ Carl Sagan
Image of the day:
BODY~ You're Overtraining! -- "Damn it! Another one of those articles that forced us to reevaluate what we're doing in the gym!"
~ Studies: Older exercisers recover as fast as children -- We lose strength as we age, but older people can recover from exercise as quickly as children (but slower than young adults).
~ Researcher Launches Human Trials On Promising New Diet Product -- Oligo fructose is "not a chemical or a drug. In fact it's a food product that is already being used in things like yogurt, cereal and baby food. We have found in a previous study with rats that the fibre increases the levels of a satiety hormone called glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) in the body and increases a gene in the intestines that helps the body to create more GLP-1."
~ Help To Change Unhealthy Habits -- "But counting on willpower alone to make a change is inviting failure. A Special Report in the February issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter discusses the essential steps to a healthier life, including how planning and self-control skills -- not willpower alone -- help make healthy behavior changes."
~ Corn, Oats, Cherries And Red Wine's High Melatonin Content Can Help Delay Ageing -- "The consumption of melatonin, a natural substance produced in small amounts by human beings and present in many types of food, delays the oxidative damage and inflammatory processes typical of the old age. Melatonin can be found in small amounts in some fruits and vegetables, like onions, cherries and bananas, and in cereals like corn, oats and rice, as well as in some aromatic plants, such as mint, lemon verbena, sage or thyme, and in red wine."
~ Calcium Lowers Cardiovascular Risk In People On A Weight Loss Program -- "Taking calcium and vitamin D supplements while on a weight loss program lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease."
~ Debate Grows Over Female Thyroid Testing -- "Even a slightly underactive thyroid - too mild for symptoms - during pregnancy might trigger premature birth and babies born with lower IQs. But doctors don't know if treating a symptom-free mother would help...."
~ Vitamin D Deficiency is a Major Cause of Parkinson's Disease -- "In an excellent paper, a pair of researchers (father and son) presented considerable evidence that vitamin D deficiency is one cause, perhaps the major cause, of Parkinson's disease."
PSYCHE
~ Youth suicides up after decade of decline -- "New government figures show a surprising increase in youth suicides after a decade of decline, and some mental health experts think a drop in use of antidepressant drugs may be to blame."
~ Studies tie depression, loneliness to physical ills -- "Depression, severe mental illness and loneliness are linked to illnesses such as heart disease and dementia, according to several studies published Monday."
~ Could Extreme Irritability Be Childhood Bipolar Disorder? -- "Results of a new study may help improve the diagnosis and treatment of two debilitating childhood mental disorders -- pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) and a syndrome called severe mood dysregulation (SMD)."
~ Study: Sex of any kind can harm teens emotionally -- "Researchers at the University of California San Francisco found that up to one-half of the sexually active teenagers in their study said they'd ever felt "used," guilty or regretful after having sex."
~ The Changing Psychology of Wealth.
~ Betting on Awareness [The Frontal Cortex] -- "Conscious awareness is difficult to measure. On the one hand, it's a private, subjective phenomenon that resists easy quantification. (Only I know what I am aware of.) On the other hand, neuroscience won't be able to understand many mental phenomena - like consciousness - unless it can develop objective measurements for these slippery, subjective phenomena."
~ New UCLA Study Challenges Theory Of Inner Clock -- "For decades, scientists have believed that the brain possesses an internal clock that allows it to keep track of time. Now a UCLA study in the Feb. 1 edition of Neuron proposes a new model in which a series of physical changes to the brain's cells helps the organ to monitor the passage of time."
~ Symptoms of depression linked to early stages of artery disease -- "Depressive symptoms—especially physical signs, such as fatigue and loss of appetite—may be associated with thickening arteries, which may reflect an early sign of coronary artery disease, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals."
CULTURE
~ Obama Confronts 'Outsider' Dilemma -- How does he win and still maintain his identity as a party outsider bringing hope rather than more of the same?
~ House Passes $463B Spending Bill That Would Allocate $1.3B Increase To Fund International HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria Programs.
~ The FDA Isn't Making it Easy to Identify Cloned Foods.
~ Republicans block Senate debate on Iraq -- "Republicans blocked a debate on the Iraq war in the U.S. Senate on Monday, dealing a setback to critics of President George W. Bush's plan to send in thousands more troops, but Democrats warned they would not give up trying to force Bush to change course." The more things change, the more they stay the same.
~ Super Bowl draws 3rd-largest U.S. TV audience ever -- And they all feel asleep in boredom.
~ Men Are From Mars, But Only If They're Straight -- Why does the makers of the Snickers Bar hate gay men?
~ Prince rocked the Super Snore halftime show.
~ Glenn Greenwald: Profile of the Neoconservative Warrior -- "Mark Steyn is one of the most extremist warmongers in our country and is gripped by the fear that the European race will die out as Muslims breed too rapidly and take over. He has also been as fundamentally wrong as one can be about virtually every issue he has touched."
~ Ancient Semitic Snake Spells Deciphered in Egyptian Pyramid -- "The world's oldest Semitic passages—spells found deep within an ancient pyramid—show that the Egyptians turned to neighboring Canaanites for help fending off venomous snakes."
HABITATS
~ Pedestrian-Friendly Communities Make For More Active Older Adults -- "Build it, and they will walk. That's the message from a new study that suggests communities that make it easy for senior citizens to walk will end up with more active residents."
~ Enviga's calorie-burning claims investigated -- "Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Monday said his office was investigating claims by Coca-Cola and Nestle that their new drink can burn calories, saying it may amount to 'voodoo nutrition.'"
~ New, Improved Environmental Destruction! -- Mother Jones is not so impressed with BP's new foray into biofuels.
~ Sea creature's toxin could lead to promising cancer treatment -- "A toxin derived from a reclusive sea creature resembling a translucent doughnut has inspired UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers to develop a related compound that shows promise as a cancer treatment."
~ Chemists show that nature could have used different protein building blocks -- "Chemists at Yale have done what Mother Nature chose not to — make a protein-like molecule out of non-natural building blocks, according to a report featured early online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society."
~ Global Warming is Only One Symptom -- "Climate change is only one symptom of a greater disease scientists call global environmental change (GEC). Global warming is the rash. GEC is the bubonic plague. The other symptoms are equally deadly and still barely recognized outside science."
~ World's oldest rocks show how Earth may have dodged frozen fate of Mars.
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Theta Healing, Magic, and the Big Picture and More on Theta healing from Alan Kazlev.
~ Inter-religious theologies -- CJ Smith looks at religious pluralism from a Christian viewpoint.
~ Buddhist Geeks 5: We’re Not the Cheerleaders of Buddhism -- Part 2 of their podcast with Phil Stanley.
~ It's Days Like This -- "Every day that we meditate we water the seeds of strength in our store consciousness and keep open the avenues to balance and peace so that when we really need understanding of a difficult moment the pathway to reach that realization is already there."
~ Over at the I-I pod: Transcendent Sex.
~ From ~C4Chaos, Debate on Religion and Reason: Sam Harris vs. Reza Aslan.
~ Z-Bate! Faith, Reason & The Four Quadrants, an attempt to have a focused debate on integral questions.
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