AFPWed, 29 Aug 2007 17:19 UTC
Some 68 people have died from a mystery illness over the course of nearly four months in central Democratic Republic of Congo, local authorities said Wednesday.
A total of 212 cases have been detected in Western Kasai province, said Fortunat Tumba Tshitoka, the provincial health minister.
Do you remember exactly where you were when you learned of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? Your answer is probably yes, and researchers are beginning to understand why we remember events that carry negative emotional weight.
In the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Boston College psychologist, Elizabeth Kensinger and colleagues, explain when emotion is likely to reduce our memory inconsistencies.
Mothers who cradle their baby to their right hand side are displaying signs of extreme stress, a new study suggests.
Although most mums feel stressed in the early stages of their baby's life, the study by Durham University researchers suggests their baby cradling habits are a key indicator of whether this stress could become overwhelming and lead to depression.
Previous research has already shown that the majority of mothers prefer to cradle their baby to their left regardless of whether they are left or right handed.
As at least one in ten women develop post-natal depression, studying non-verbal cues such as baby cradling could potentially help doctors and health visitors identify which mothers are in need of extra professional support before it gets too late.
Experts say that stress in mums can lead to depression which can have a detrimental effect on their baby's mental development and wellbeing.
The African National Congress (ANC) came out in defence of embattled Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang this week, reiterating its confidence in her ability to "implement the policies of the ANC-led government in working to achieve better health for all".
Paul Krugman
AlternetMon, 27 Aug 2007 19:22 UTC
Conservative opposition to giving every child in this country access to health care is, in a fundamental sense, un-American.
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In a statement released recently, over 600 professionals are urging Congress to stop water fluoridation until Congressional hearings are conducted. They cite new scientific evidence that fluoridation, long promoted to fight tooth decay, is ineffective and has serious health risks.
With less information to go on, the players exhibited substantially more activity in the amygdala and in the orbitofrontal cortex, which is believed to modulate activity in the amygdala. In other words, we filled in the gaps of our knowledge with fear. This fear creates our bias for certainty, since we always try to minimize our feelings of fear. As a result, we pretend that we have better intelligence about Iraqi WMD than we actually do; we selectively interpret the facts until the uncertainty is removed.
Neuroscientists from Harvard, USC and Caltech trace abnormal moral choices to damaged emotional circuits
Consider the following scenario: someone you know has AIDS and plans to infect others, some of whom will die. Your only options are to let it happen or to kill the person.
Do you pull the trigger?
Most people waver or say they could not, even if they agree that in theory they should. But according to a new study in the journal Nature, subjects with damage to a part of the frontal lobe make a less personal calculation.
The logical choice, they say, is to sacrifice one life to save many.
Chocoholics really do have chocolate on the brain. Their grey matter reacts differently when they see or taste chocolate than people who do not crave the food.
British researchers used brain scans to investigate subconscious reactions to the confection and found that the pleasure centres of chocolate lovers' brains lit up more strongly in response to the food than those who are less partial.
There may also be some truth in calling the love of chocolate an addiction in some people. When cravers viewed pictures of chocolate this activated regions of the brain known to be involved in habit-forming behaviours and drug addiction.
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