Placebos are a surprisingly common prescription, according to a US study in which nearly half of the doctors surveyed said they had doled out a dummy pill at some point.

Researchers at the University of Chicago said yesterday that the study raises ethical questions and suggests a need for greater recognition and understanding of placebo use.

"It illustrates that doctors believe expectation and belief have therapeutic potential," said Rachel Sherman, a medical student at the University of Chicago, whose study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Many people pay silly money to wear a particular logo or a designer brand. Of course, a designer outfit doesn't keep you any warmer or dryer than an unbranded one, but functionality is only part of the story. Designer products say something about you - you are a trendy, sexy or sophisticated person. Brands help us to express who we think we are and who we want to be.

Big name brands are an integral part of our lives, says Davide Ravasi, associate professor in the Institute of Strategic Management of Bocconi University, Italy. Whether its Levi jeans, BMW cars or Nokia phones, we know the brands we like. These are more than products; they are symbols, or in other words, they are objects carrying meaning.

In a recent ESF Exploratory Workshop convened by Ravasi, scholars of various disciplines within the social sciences discussed how symbolic attributes of products affect their adoption and evolution.

The Dream Robbers

What happens when a rat stops dreaming? In 2004, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison decided to find out. Their method was simple, if a bit devilish. Step 1: Strand a rat in a tub of water. In the center of this tiny sea, allot the creature its own little desert island in the form of an inverted flowerpot. The rat can swim around as much as it pleases, but come nightfall, if it wants any sleep, it has to clamber up and stretch itself across the flowerpot, its belly sagging over the drainage hole.

In this uncomfortable position, the rat is able to rest and eventually fall asleep. But as soon as the animal hits REM sleep, the muscular paralysis that accompanies this stage of vivid dreaming causes its body to slacken. The rat slips through the hole and gets dunked in the water. The surprised rat is then free to crawl back onto the pot, lick the drops off its paws, and go back to sleep - but it won't get any REM sleep.

The growth in relative materialism over the past 20 years is taking a heavy toll on the wellbeing of English-speaking nations

By far the most significant consequence of "selfish capitalism" (Thatch/Blatcherism) has been a startling increase in the incidence of mental illness in both children and adults since the 1970s. As I report in my book, The Selfish Capitalist - Origins of Affluenza, World Health Organisation and nationally representative studies in the United States, Britain and Australia, reveal that it almost doubled between the early 80s and the turn of the century. These increases are very unlikely to be due to greater preparedness to acknowledge distress - the psychobabbling therapy culture was already established.

Add to this the astonishing fact that citizens of Selfish Capitalist, English-speaking nations (which tend to be one and the same) are twice as likely to suffer mental illness as those from mainland western Europe, which is largely Unselfish Capitalist in its political economy. An average 23% of Americans, Britons, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians suffered in the last 12 months, but only 11.5% of Germans, Italians, French, Belgians, Spaniards and Dutch. The message could not be clearer. Selfish Capitalism, much more than genes, is extremely bad for your mental health. But why is it so toxic?

©REUTERS/CDC/Janice Carr/Handout

An undated scanning electron micrograph of Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Treating severe pneumonia in children at home with oral antibiotics works just as well as treating them with intravenous drugs at a hospital as advised by the World Health Organization, scientists said on Thursday.

©REUTERS/Jamil Bittar

Gloria, the first calf born to a cloned cow, Vitoria (L), is seen on a government farm outside Brasilia in this October 4, 2004 file photo.

The U.S. Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) is expected to declare as early as next week that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Australia is suffering through its worst dry spell in a millennium. The outback has turned into a dust bowl, crops are dying off at fantastic rates, cities are rationing water, coral reefs are dying, and the agricultural base is evaporating.

But what really intrigues Glenn Albrecht - a philosopher by training - is how his fellow Australians are reacting.

They're getting sad.

©BBC

Norovirus causes sudden vomiting and diarrhoea.

People struck down by a stomach bug sweeping the UK have been urged not to go back to work.

Doctors estimate more than 100,000 people a week are catching norovirus, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting.

"Some recent studies suggest that over-consumption of fluoride can raise the risks of disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain and the thyroid gland," reports Scientific American editors (January 2008). "Scientific attitudes toward fluoridation may be starting to shift," writes author Dan Fagin.

"Fluoride, the most consumed drug in the USA, is deliberately added to 2/3 of public water supplies theoretically to reduce tooth decay, but with no scientifically-valid evidence proving safety or effectiveness," says lawyer Paul Beeber, President, New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation.

Fagin, award-wining environmental reporter and Director of New York
University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program, writes,
"There is no universally accepted optimal level for daily intake of fluoride."
Some researchers even wonder whether the 1 mg/L added into drinking water is too much, reports Fagin.

Health Ministry makes positive ID of H5N1 bird flu virus in Binyamina kindergarten. Agriculture Ministry quarantines all chicken coops, hatcheries within six-mile radius pending further testing.

The Haifa District Physician, Prof. Shmuel Rishpon, confirmed Thursday that a deadly strain of the bird flu virus has infected chickens at a petting zoo in a Binyamina kindergarten.

Earlier Thursday morning 18 of the 25 chickens in the kindergarten's petting zoo, were found dead.

©Ido Ezer

Health Ministry workers at the kindergarten

"The virus was identified as H5N1 bird flue," said Rishpon, adding that humans that contract this strain have only a 50% survival rate.

Rishpon commended the kindergarten teacher for her decision not to discard the dead chickens but rather to call a veterinarian, who sent samples of the poultry's blood to the Health Ministry for further testing.