Health & WellnessS


Eye 1

Narcissism: College students think they're so special


MSNBC
Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:25 UTC
NEW YORK - Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."
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Smiley

Students turn a profit from candy sales

Rachel Byrd
Daily Press
Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:17 UTC
VICTORVILLE - With candy sales banned on school campuses, sugar pushers are the latest trend at local schools. Backpacks are filled with Snickers and Twinkees for all sweet tooths willing to pay the price.

"It's created a little underground economy, with businessmen selling everything from a pack of skittles to an energy drink," said Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville.
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Bulb

Schizophrenia memory differences


BBC
Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:45 UTC
People with schizophrenia use different areas of their brain to process some short-term memories, research suggests.

The finding by US scientists might help explain why the condition is often linked with enduring memory problems.

The study, by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, found healthy subjects used the right side of the brain to remember specific locations.

Image
©Unknown
The scans showed up areas of activity in the brain
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Briefcase

Children's Memory May Be More Reliable Than Adults' In Court Cases


Science Daily
Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:25 UTC
The U.S. legal system has long assumed that all testimony is not equally credible, that some witnesses are more reliable than others. In tough cases with child witnesses, it assumes adult witnesses to be more reliable. But what if the legal system had it wrong?

Researchers Valerie Reyna, human development professor, and Chuck Brainerd, human development and law school professor--both from Cornell University--argue that like the two-headed Roman god Janus, memory is of two minds--that is, memories are captured and recorded separately and differently in two distinct parts of the mind.
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Monkey Wrench

Activist, recipient seek to 'inspire' with controversial transplant

Randy Boswell
Canada.com
Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:02 UTC
A long-suffering Canadian woman with a new lease on life, and the Christian activist from Australia who gave up one of his kidneys to save her, say they want to "inspire" the world with their controversial transplant - performed Thursday in Cyprus after a Toronto hospital refused to do the operation last year on ethical grounds.

Ashwyn Falkingham
©Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Ashwin Falkingham
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Bulb

Shining a light on fluorescent bulbs

Alex Johnson
MSNBC
Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:54 UTC
Compact fluorescent light bulbs, long touted by environmentalists as a more efficient and longer-lasting alternative to the incandescent bulbs that have lighted homes for more than a century, are running into resistance from waste industry officials and some environmental scientists, who warn that the bulbs' poisonous innards pose a bigger threat to health and the environment than previously thought.
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People

Hyper girls 'struggle as adults'


BBC
Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:40 UTC
Hyperactive young girls are more likely to have "serious" problems in adulthood, research suggests.

A study of more than 800 girls up to the age of 21 found hyperactivity was linked to poor job prospects, abusive relationships and teenage pregnancy.
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Ambulance

Hospital confirms first UK case of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis

Aidan Jones and Sarah Boseley
The Guardian
Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:12 UTC


TB Nurses
©Gianluigi Guercia/AFP
Nurses wait to treat patients in the Sizwe hospital TB ward in Edenvale on the outskirt of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Doctors have diagnosed the first ever UK case of a virtually untreatable strain of tuberculosis, marking a further step in the disease's fightback against the antibiotics that once kept it in check. A man in his 30s is in isolation at a hospital in Glasgow and is being treated with a cocktail of antibiotics in an effort to control the extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), the Guardian has learnt.
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Pills

Overdose Death Rate Surges, Legal Drugs Are Mostly to Blame


Drug War Chronicle
Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:00 UTC
According to a little noticed January report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2005, the last year for which firm data are available. That makes drug overdose the second leading cause of accidental death, behind only motor vehicle accidents (43,667) and ahead of firearms deaths (30,694).

What's more disturbing is that the 2005 figures are only the latest in such a seemingly inexorable increase in overdose deaths that the eras of the 1970s heroin epidemic and the 1980s crack wave pale in comparison. According to the CDC, some 10,000 died of overdoses in 1990; by 1999, that number had hit 20,000; and in the six years between then and 2005, it increased by more than 60%.
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Health

Hispanics With Clogged Arteries At Greatest Risk Of Stroke, Heart Attack, Study Shows


sciencedaily.com
Sun, 23 Mar 2008 19:05 UTC
Hispanics who have even a small amount of plaque build-up in the neck artery that supplies blood to the brain are up to four times more likely to suffer or die from a stroke or heart attack than Hispanics who do not have plaque, according to a study published in the March 19, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
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