Monday, June 04, 2007

Speedlinking 6/4/07

Quote of the day:

"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Image of the day:


BODY
~ The 30 Day Mass Plan -- "Got 30 days before your summer job at Pizza Hut starts? That's just enough time to complete this program and add some spicy meat to that mozzarella body of yours."
~ How Fat Tissue Works -- "Jaswinder K. Sethi and Antonio J. Vidal-Puig review current knowledge on how fat tissue works in our bodies. They describe the biochemicals released by fat tissue and how they help keep the internal environment of the body stable by either storing fat or burning it to produce energy."
~ Flaxseed Halts Prostate Cancer Growth New Study Shows -- "A new US study suggests that flaxseed, which is rich in omega 3 fatty acids and lignans, can stop prostate cancer tumours from growing."
~ Oatmeal: A Healthy Belly Fat Burning Food -- "Oatmeal is among the best when it comes to healthy carbohydrates and "quality" calories. Due to it's high fiber content and high levels of certain fat-burning antioxidants it can also be considered a "fat burning" food." Some recipes.
~ 'Good' Cholesterol Levels may be Slightly Boosted by Exercise -- "Regular exercise appears to modestly increase levels of high-density lipoprotein, or "good," cholesterol, according to a meta-analysis study in Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals."
~ Omega-3 fatty acids reduce blood pressure: study -- "A diet with liberal servings of fish, nuts and seeds rich in nutrients called omega-3 fatty acids can help lower a person's blood pressure, according to a study released on Monday."
~ Natural Compound And Exercise Boost Memory In Mice -- "A natural compound found in blueberries, tea, grapes, and cocoa enhances memory in mice, according to newly published research. This effect increased further when mice also exercised regularly."


PSYCHE
~ New treatment for depression — marriage -- "People who are looking to ease depression may have a new treatment option — marriage." Unless, of course, you marry the wrong person.
~ Breaking Down the Brain: Problems with the Logic of Double Dissociations [Developing Intelligence] -- "If one type of damage leads to difficulty on task A, but not task B, and a different type of damage leads to the opposite pattern of performance, then tasks A and B must rely on distinct neural mechanisms ... Right? Given what everyone knows about computers, you might think this inference is perfectly valid... The brain is a computing machine of some sort. Yet some debate has recently emerged about the logic of such double dissociations in cognitive science."
~ To Understand How Brain Learns To Move Our Muscles, Math That Powers Spam Filters Used -- "A team of biomedical engineers has developed a computer model that makes use of more or less predictable "guesstimates" of human muscle movements to explain how the brain draws on both what it recently learned and what it's known for some time to anticipate what it needs to develop new motor skills."
~ A Guide to Cultivating Compassion in Your Life, With 7 Practices -- "I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. I’m not talking about the short-term gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs or gambling (though I’m not knocking them), but something that will bring true and lasting happiness. The kind that sticks."
~ Study Finds Possible Depression Predictor in Poor Sibling Relationships -- "Small spats among brothers and sisters have been around as long as there have been brothers and sisters, but new research now suggests that more serious childhood sibling strife could be directly linked to depression in adults."
~ Brain Activity Reflects Differences In Types Of Anxiety -- "All anxiety is not created equal, and a research team at the University of Illinois now has the data to prove it. The team has found compelling evidence that differing patterns of brain activity are associated with each of two types of anxiety: anxious apprehension (verbal rumination, worry) and anxious arousal (intense fear, panic, or both).Their work appears this month online in Psychophysiology."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Democratic Debate Report Card -- "As Mark Halperin scored it from New Hampshire, Hillary won the bout, while Edwards and Biden landed jabs."
~ Parsing Last Night's Democratic Debate -- "Three points about last night's Democratic debate in Manchester, N.H."
~ Immoral and Tortured Legal Justifications to Legally Justify the Immorality of Torture -- "Stuart Taylor for The National Journal discusses how the Bush administration disregarded any considerations of elemental morality or lessons of history in choosing to use torture, but instead sought ways to pervert legal meaning to justify the decision."
~ Capital Sources: The Art of Interrogation -- "Coercion doesn’t work. Empathy is a more powerful tool than you might think. A veteran Air Force interrogator who grilled prisoners in Iraq talks about how to gather information during wartime."
~ Judge Dismisses Charges Against Teen Gitmo Detainee -- "A military judge on Monday dismissed terrorism-related charges against a prisoner charged with killing an American soldier in Afghanistan, in a stunning reversal for the Bush administration's attempts to try Guantanamo detainees in military court."
~ In Hollywood, Creative Women Are Still at the Back of the Bus; Way Back -- "Less than a fifth of Hollywood's screenwriters are women, and the reasons behind this disparity are less than encouraging."
~ Will Electronic Voting Reform Create New Ways to Steal Elections? -- "Elections have been stolen in America since the 18th Century -- and top elections experts are warning that Congress's latest attempt at regulating voting machines won't change a thing."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Is Microsoft's Surface computer the next big thing? -- "When I first saw Microsoft's new, top-secret project, it was shrouded under a black cloth. Execs from Redmond told us that this mystery product would change computing forever. Then they whisked away the drapery with a meaningful flourish to reveal ... a freakin' table?"
~ Why the rumored discovery of the Higgs boson is bad news for particle physics -- "Some call the Higgs boson the Holy Grail of particle physics. As the only undetected element of the field's theoretical masterpiece—the "standard model"—the Higgs guarantees a Nobel Prize for the experimenters who find it first. Now the European Union has spent an estimated $8 billion to build the world's largest particle accelerator, the large hadron collider, to finally track it down."
~ Study: Chickens Beat Columbus to America -- "Why did the chicken cross the ocean? To get to America before Columbus - and from the other direction - according to a new report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
~ Ancient Frogs Rafted to the Caribbean -- "South American frogs used rafts to colonize Central America and the Caribbean."
~ For spider-strength silk go back to basics -- "If you want to spin silk like a spider then you need to rethink your starting material, Oxford University scientists have discovered."
~ Duetting birds with rhythm present a greater threat -- "Birds that sing duets with incredible rhythmic precision present a greater threat to other members of their species than those that whistle a sloppier tune, according to a study of Australian magpie-larks reported in the June 5th issue of Current Biology."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ The Mind Outside The Brain (Part 1) and The Mind Outside the Brain (Part 2) -- Deepak Chopra looks at "mind fields."
~ Holotropic Breathwork -- "On Saturday I participated in a "No Frills Breathwork" workshop, and it was a fascinating experience. The technique is based on the work of Stanislov Grof and his Holotropic Breathwork. Having seen the awesome potential of altered states of consciousness entered in a variety of ways, both incorporating the use of mind altering substances and not, I am especially drawn to this potentially powerful tool."
~ Rationality and Spirituality -- "Highly recommended piece . How many people do you know who are pre-rational? Maybe the better question is Do you know any that are rational?"
~ BLOG: Guest Blog: The Last Word (Timothy Melody) -- Another quest post on KW's blog.
~ Buddhist Geeks 22: The Dualistic Conundrum - Insight Meditation and Primordial Awareness -- "In the next episode with Insight Meditation teacher John Travis, he discusses how both the gradual and sudden schools of enlightenment fit in with the practice of vipassana meditation."
~ Process and Difference: Between Cosmological and Poststructuralist Postmodernisms -- "The above is the title of the book published in 2002 by the State University of New York Press, edited by Catherine Keller and Anne Daniell. It is one of the contributions in the Suny Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought. The purpose of this book is to explore the interstices between the two brands of postmodernism in the title, generally represented by Whitehead and Derrida."


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