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How to read food labels: What you read is NOT what you get


Telephone

Men lose their minds speaking to pretty women

men and pretty women
© GettyThe research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive
Talking to an attractive woman really can make a man lose his mind, according to a new study.

The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.

Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or 'cognitive resources' trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.

The findings have implications for the performance of men who flirt with women in the workplace, or even exam results in mixed-sex schools.

Evil Rays

Approaching Epidemic: Brain Damage from Mobile Phone Radiation

911 cell
© Unknown
A collaborative team of international EMF activists has released a report detailing eleven design flaws of the 13-country, Telecom-funded Interphone study.

The exposé discusses research on cell phones and brain tumors, concluding that:

  • There is a risk of brain tumors from cell phone use
  • Telecom funded studies underestimate the risk of brain tumors
  • Children have larger risks than adults for brain tumors


The Interphone study, begun in 1999, was intended to determine the risks of brain tumors, but its full publication has been held up for years. Components of this study published to date reveal what the authors call a 'systemic-skew', greatly underestimating brain tumor risk.

The design flaws include categorizing subjects who used portable phones (which emit the same microwave radiation as cell phones,) as 'unexposed'; exclusion of many types of brain tumors; exclusion of people who had died, or were too ill to be interviewed as a consequence of their brain tumor; and exclusion of children and young adults, who are more vulnerable.

Magnify

Believing is Seeing

Folk wisdom usually has it that "seeing is believing," but new research suggests that "believing is seeing," too - at least when it comes to perceiving other people's emotions.

An international team of psychologists from the United States, New Zealand and France has found that the way we initially think about the emotions of others biases our subsequent perception (and memory) of their facial expressions. So once we interpret an ambiguous or neutral look as angry or happy, we later remember and actually see it as such.

The study, published in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science, "addresses the age-old question: 'Do we see reality as it is, or is what we see influenced by our preconceptions?'" said coauthor Piotr Winkielman, professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego. "Our findings indicate that what we think has a noticeable effect on our perceptions."

Magnify

New Research Maps Brain and Gene Function in Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder

Mount Sinai researchers have found that real-time brain imaging suggests that patients with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are physically unable to activate neurological networks that can help regulate emotion. The findings, by Harold W. Koenigsberg, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, were presented at the 11th International Congress of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ISSPD), held August 2123 at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. The research will also be published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Dr. Koenigsberg observed how the brains of people with BPD reacted to social and emotional stimuli. He found that when people with BPD attempted to control and reduce their reactions to disturbing emotional scenes, the anterior cingulated cortex and intraparetical sulci areas of the brain that are active in healthy people under the same conditions remained inactive in the BPD patients.

Syringe

"It's the Vaccines Stupid!"

Part I: Evidence Linking Autism Rise in Children to Vaccinations

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The WHO and US Government CDC are escalating a public psychological conditioning to create hysteria and panic among an uninformed public about an alleged "virus" H1N1 Influenza A, aka Swine Flu, whose alleged effects to date appear comparable with a common cold. Before people line up in the streets demanding their vaccinations for their children and themselves, it would be wise to remember, to paraphrase a 1992 campaign statement of Bill Clinton to George H.W. Bush: "It's the vaccination, Stupid!"

Target

Anger uncorked at bottle maker Sigg over BPA

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This undated file photo shows the aluminum water bottles by SIGG, a Swiss company.
Sigg bottles are leaving Katy Farber with a bitter taste.

Like countless other eco-conscious consumers, the Middlesex, Vermont, teacher and blogger switched to the aluminum bottles for her two young girls because of bisphenol-A, or BPA, a substance commonly used to harden plastic that has raised health concerns and bedeviled buyers of plastic bottles.

Now this shocker from Sigg Switzerland: Bottles made by the company before August 2008 had "trace amounts" of BPA in the epoxy liners. Sigg officials knew it since June 2006, but didn't announce it until last month.

Cow Skull

Smart chickens not duped by GM feed

Chickens refusing to eat the maize they had been fed has led to the discovery that their feed had been genetically modified to include a well-known weed and insect killer.

Strilli Oppenheimer was recently approached by Dawid Klopper, the head gardener at the family estate, Brenthurst, informing her that her indigenous African chickens were refusing to eat the mealies in the chicken feed bought from a large supplier. Concerned that the birds may be ingesting genetically modified maize, she instructed Klopper to have the maize tested.

The chickens' diet was immediately changed to include organic vegetables, Oppenheimer stopped consuming the home-grown eggs and the maize was sent to the GMO testing facility at the University of the Free State for analysis.

Syringe

WHO Admits to Releasing Pandemic Virus into Population via 'Mock-Up' Vaccines

The document on the WHO website linked below states that it is common procedure to release pandemic viruses into the population in order to get a jump ahead of the real pandemic, so as to fast track the vaccine for when it is needed.

In Europe, some manufacturers have conducted advance studies using a so-called "mock-up" vaccine. Mock-up vaccines contain an active ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in human populations and thus mimics the novelty of a pandemic virus.

According to the website, "Such advance studies can greatly expedite regulatory approval."

Sources:

World Health Organization

Health

The New Back-to-School Ritual: Quarantines

David Walter Banks for The New York Times
Sarah Spitz, 18, a freshman from Boston, Mass., is recovering from the swine flu in the common area in the Turman South dorm on the Emory University campus in Atlanta.
Atlanta - It looks like a typical college dormitory: the functional single cots, the students lazing in pajamas and sandals, the laptops and iPhones clicked to Facebook.

But the Turman South dormitory at Emory University in Atlanta is what administrators call a self-isolation facility. Or, as students call it, the Swine Flu Dorm. The Leper Colony. Club Swine.

It is a holding pen for the coughing, wheezing, hand-sanitizing souls whose return to college coincided with their infection by a serious and highly contagious virus. More than 100 strong at Emory, they belong to a growing number of students at colleges across America experiencing a bizarre start to the year: the on-campus quarantine.