"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."
~ Thomas Jefferson
Image of the day:
BODY
~ 20 Spankin' New Studies -- "Short snappy synopses of small but smart studies that you don't need a PhD to understand. And get this — some of them contain useful, applicable info that you can start applying to your training right away!"
~ Blue Tortillas Better For Dieters And Diabetics -- "People with dieting blues should try swapping white corn tortillas for blue. A recent study suggests that the coloured flatbreads are healthier, especially for diabetics and dieters, Sara Jensen reports in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Scientists in Mexico, home of the taco, found that tortillas made from blue corn had less starch and a lower glycemic index than their white counter parts."
~ How Much Salt Is Safe? -- "An increasing body of evidence indicates that we should reduce the amount of salt in our diet. The American Medical Association (AMA), the American Heart Association (AHA), the American Dietetic Association (ADA), and the National Institutes of Health have begun a campaign to cut the salt intake of Americans by one-half. The AMA is even pushing the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw salt's designation as "safe," according to UCLA's Healthy Years." If you eat a healthy diet very low in processed foods, salt is fine.
~ A few cups of coffee may lower colon cancer risk (AFP) -- "Drinking a few cups of coffee a day may lower the risk of advanced colon cancer, at least for women, Japanese researchers said Wednesday."
~ Why Breastfeeding In The First Hour Of Life Is Important -- "Today countries around the world start celebrating World Breastfeeding Week, which this year emphasizes the importance of breastfeeding in the first hour of life."
~ Lupus And Genetic Mutations Linked By Research -- "A gene discovered by scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine has been linked to lupus and related autoimmune diseases. The finding, reported in the current issue of Nature Genetics, is the latest in a series of revelations that shed new light on what goes wrong in human cells to cause the diseases."
~ Strength Training and Diabetes -- "If you have diabetes, exercise is essential. Learn how strength training can help you lose weight and improve insulin sensitivity."
PSYCHE
~ Who’s Minding the Mind? -- "Psychologists say that “priming” people in this way is not some form of hypnotism, or even subliminal seduction; rather, it’s a demonstration of how everyday sights, smells and sounds can selectively activate goals or motives that people already have."
~ Brain activity may explain "placebo effect" -- "Individual differences in the area of the brain linked with reward may help explain why some people report pain relief from inert treatments like sugar pills, according to a new study."
~ Why We Have Sex: 237 Reasons and Counting -- "A new survey finds surprisingly few differences in motivations between the sexes."
~ Bibliotherapy: Can Reading Alleviate Your Depression? -- "Years ago, one of the first books I had my patients read was psychiatrist David D. Burn's Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. What I like about this book is the lack of psychobabble terminology and self-help cliches. There are easy to read explanations of depression and other mood disorders and excellent examples of cognitive behavioral techniques (CBT) that can be practiced at home."
~ Wrestling with Bipolar Disorder -- "Depression is the bane of bipolar."
~ Bipolar Disorder: A Mistaken Diagnosis -- "Sometimes bipolar disorder is easy to miss."
~ 'Wake-Up Pill' Under Study to Treat Patients with Bipolar Disorder -- "A preliminary study of 85 patients with bipolar disorder shows that a drug used to treat patients with sleep disorders might also control the depressive symptoms associated with bipolar disorder. At least 44 percent of the participants in the study reported improved symptoms, a noteworthy improvement for a disorder in which new treatments are needed, according to the study`s author, Mark Frye, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Mood Disorders Clinic and Research Program."
~ Altering a protein makes mice less fearful -- "A University of Iowa study shows that loss or chemical inhibition of a protein, known as acid sensing ion channel protein (ASIC1a), reduces innate fear behavior in lab animals, making normally timid mice relatively fearless. The findings might provide useful insight into anxiety disorders and may even point the way to a new therapeutic target."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Eternity for Atheists -- "If God is dead, does that mean we cannot survive our own deaths? Recent best-selling books against religion agree that immortality is a myth we ought to outgrow. But there are a few thinkers with unimpeachable scientific credentials who have been waving their arms and shouting: not so fast. Even without God, they say, we have reason to hope for — or possibly fear — an afterlife."
~ Language Evolution’s Slippery Tropes -- "Linguists are different. In the middle of the 19th century, the main professional bodies governing linguistic research formally banned any investigation into the origins of language, regarding it as pointless. The topic remained disreputable for more than a century, but in the last decade or so, language evolution has eased toward the front burner, attracting the attention of linguists, neuroscientists, psychologists and geneticists."
~ The Feed: Did McDonald’s Give In to Temptation? -- "Four years after the fast-food chain began to reinvent itself, Supersize sodas are back, but this time they have a new name."
~ Boomers caught between kids, aging parents -- "Many baby boomers — and even their younger Generation X and "Echo Boomer" counterparts — find themselves "sandwiched" between caring for aging parents while still raising their own kids, to say nothing of working full time and saving for their own retirement."
~ Obama Would Send GIs to Pakistan -- "Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted."
~ An Immoral Philosophy -- "What kind of philosophy says that it's O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?"
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Ethanol Scam: Ethanol Hurts the Environment And Is One of America's Biggest Political Boondoggles -- "The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn't that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after "solutions" that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn." I totally agree with this.
~ Concerned Scientists criticize nuke plant -- "The Union of Concerned Scientists is upset over U.S. plans to build a plutonium processing plant without consulting the International Atomic Energy Agency."
~ Spanish Farmers Modernize Water Control -- "The Moorish invaders who once ruled Spain brought with them a clever irrigation system that helped turn arid land into verdant fields. A millennium later it is still largely in use, and Spain remains one of Europe's breadbaskets."
~ MIT team cooks up simple fuel recipe -- "MIT student Jules Walter has seen firsthand the impact of deforestation in his native Haiti: Nearly 98 percent of the island's forests are gone, and more trees are being cut down every year."
~ Using a magnet to tune a magnet -- "An international research team, led by scientists at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN), has found a way to switch a material`s magnetic properties from ‘hard` to ‘soft` and back again - something which could lead to new ways of controlling electromagnetic devices."
~ Electricity from body heat -- "Making calls from a cell phone with no battery, using just the warmth of your hand? Perhaps that`s no more than a pipe dream right now. But new circuits are already making it possible to harness body heat for generating electricity."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Working with addictive tendencies -- "Some ways of working with addictive tendencies…"
~ How Well Are You Doing at Being a Responsible Global Citizen? A Powerful Quiz -- "People fight for their basic human rights, but all rights and freedoms have corresponding responsibilities. This quiz/article is the responsibility-side companion to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You may be very surprised to find out that such a comprehensive, integral and spiritual list of global citizen responsibilities even existed?"
~ Thinking Out Loud -- "So it’s two years now since I decided to blog on the subject, very loosely, of Buddhism without Buddhism , and it’s been a highly pleasurable ride. Perhaps these days I am less inclined to identify myself as Buddhist, or even as Buddhish, and the blog has perhaps become less saffron-tinged and more wide ranging in its philosophical interests." Happy 2-year birthday to Will.
~ 14 Inspirational Quotes on Understanding -- Nice collection of quotes.
~ Generational Myths -- "Found this interesting observation at Duck of Minerva; For members of generation X like myself, Star Wars is one of the constitutive myths of our childhoods."
~ Interfaith Blog Event #7: Gender in Divinity -- "Welcome to the seventh Interfaith Blog Event! In each installment of this series, which we're hoping to do on a regular basis, we'll explore a single topic across five different religious traditions. I am writing from the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. Jon, from Jesusfollowers Journal, will be writing from a Protestant Christian perspective, and Sojourner from A Pagan Sojourn, will be writing from a Pagan/UU perspective. Jeff joins us from Druid Journal, and Matt joins us from Journeys In Between as an Evangelical Christian who borrows from esoteric movements like Wicca, Neo-Gnosticism, Yoga and Zen."
~ Z2: Riding the Kundalini Dragon, Integrating Altered States -- "As quite a few people here on Zaadz already know, I'm in the process of healing from trauma and this process has made me super-aware of the energies in my body. Or, better put, it's helped me give a name and context to those energies, which have always been incredibly strong and sometimes scary."
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