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Exercise Really Does Make You Clever: Fit Children Have Better Memories, Experts Say

Sophie Borland
The Daily Mail
Thu, 16 Sep 2010 16:42 UTC
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© AlamyPhysically fit children performed better in memory tests and had larger hippocampi, according to a new study.
If you want to boost your child's results at school, you could do a lot worse than ensuring that they do plenty of exercise.

Scientists have already shown that physical activity can make you brainier. But a team in America has used scans to show that an important part of the brain actually grows in children who are fit.

These youngsters tend to be more intelligent and have better memories than those who are inactive.

Scientists also found that one of the most important parts of their brains was 12 per cent larger than those of unfit youngsters.
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Video

Video: From The Gulf Stream To The Bloodstream


projectgulfimpact.org
Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:14 UTC

When Is Enough, Enough?

For nearly five months, the BP oil disaster has consumed the minds of millions of people worldwide. In addition to the horrific impacts that the crude oil and chemical dispersants have daily on the environment and the economy, a fatal threat has quietly slipped by the public's proverbial radar. The harm dealt by this silent enemy is beginning to creep into the lives of those living and working in the Gulf. The problem has been lurking in the Gulf since the first days of the BP oil spill and now has the potential ignite a disaster unlike any this country has ever seen.
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Attention

Groundbreaking Study Shows Roundup Link to Birth Defects


Organic Consumers association
Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:40 UTC
International scientists confirm dangers of Roundup at GMO-Free Regions Conference in Brussels

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the world's best-selling weedkiller Roundup, causes malformations in frog and chicken embryos at doses far lower than those used in agricultural spraying and well below maximum residue levels in products presently approved in the European Union. This is reported in research (1) published by a group around Professor Andrés Carrasco, director of the Laboratory of Molecular Embryology at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School and member of Argentina's National Council of Scientific and Technical Research.

Carrasco was led to research the embryonic effects of glyphosate by reports of high rates of birth defects in rural areas of Argentina where Monsanto's genetically modified "Roundup Ready" (RR) soybeans are grown in large monocultures sprayed from airplanes regularly. RR soy is engineered to tolerate Roundup, allowing farmers to spray the herbicide liberally to kill weeds while the crop is growing.
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Bulb

Why Meditate?

Matthieu Ricard
Huffington Post
Fri, 17 Sep 2010 00:14 UTC
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If we take an honest look at ourselves, it is easy to see that we are a mixture of light and shadow, of good qualities and defects. One of the main obstacles we face is a deep-seated and often unconscious conviction that we're born the way we are and nothing we can do can change that.

Doing so, we significantly underestimate our capacity for change. Our character traits remain the same as long as we do nothing to change them. Yet, it is possible to arrive at a more optimal way of being.

Comment: To learn more about how meditation can help relieve the stress of everyday life visit the Eiriu Eolas - Stress Control, Healing and Rejuvenation Program website here.

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Butterfly

Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State

Carl Zimmer
Discover
Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:20 UTC
clouds
© iStockphoto
I am going to do my best to hold your attention until the very last word of this column. Actually, I know it's futile. Along the way, your mind will wander off, then return, then drift away again. But I can console myself with some recent research on the subject of mind wandering. Mind wandering is not necessarily the sign of a boring column. It's just one of the things that make us human.

Everybody knows what it is like for our minds to wander, and yet, for a long time psychologists shied away from examining the experience. It seemed too elusive and subjective to study scientifically. Only in the past decade have they even measured just how common mind wandering is.

Some of the most striking evidence comes from Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who is one of the leading researchers on mind wandering. In 2005 he and his colleagues told a group of undergraduates to read the opening chapters of War and Peace on a computer monitor and then to tap a key whenever they realized they were not thinking about what they were reading. On average, the students reported that their minds wandered 5.4 times in a 45-minute session. Other researchers have gotten similar results with simpler tasks, such as pronouncing words or pressing a button in response to seeing particular letters and numbers. Depending on the experiment, people spend up to half their time not thinking about the task at hand - even when they've been told explicitly to pay attention.
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MIB

FDA won't allow food to be labeled free of genetic modification


Raw Story
Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:44 UTC
That the Food and Drug Administration is opposed to labeling foods that are genetically modified is no surprise anymore, but a report in the Washington Post indicates the FDA won't even allow food producers to label their foods as being free of genetic modification.

In reporting that the FDA will likely not require the labeling of genetically modified salmon if it approves the food product for consumption, the Post's Lyndsey Layton notes that the federal agency "won't let conventional food makers trumpet the fact that their products don't contain genetically modified ingredients."
The agency warned the dairy industry in 1994 that it could not use "Hormone Free" labeling on milk from cows that are not given engineered hormones, because all milk contains some hormones.

It has sent a flurry of enforcement letters to food makers, including B&G Foods, which was told it could not use the phrase "GMO-free" on its Polaner All Fruit strawberry spread label because GMO refers to genetically modified organisms and strawberries are produce, not organisms.
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Family

Infant's gaze may predict autism

Shari Roan
Los Angeles Times
Sun, 19 Sep 2010 14:10 UTC
High-risk babies look less at caregivers

Infants frequently gaze at people's faces. It's as if they're fascinated and, perhaps, yearning for interaction with the people in their lives. Infants who don't exhibit this fondness for human faces, researchers say, may be exhibiting one of the first signs of autism.

With autism rates soaring over the past decade, researchers are seeking the earliest clues of the disorder. The sooner a child is diagnosed and begins treatment, experts say, the better the long-term outcome. In the September issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, leading autism researchers say they think infant gaze is among the first clues of social functioning. A hallmark characteristic of autism is an inability to socialize.
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Attention

The Role of Oxalates in Autism and Chronic Disorders

William Shaw, PhD
The Weston A. Price Foundation for Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts
Sun, 19 Sep 2010 13:21 UTC
A mummy that had been preserved for a couple of thousand years in the high desert of Chile was discovered upon X-ray examination to have a very large oxalate stone in the kidney, about the size of a golf ball. The discovery of this ancient sufferer is testimony to the fact that kidney stones and oxalate toxicity have afflicted humans for a very long time.

Oxalates (the salt form of oxalic acid) are extremely painful when deposited in the body. About eighty percent of kidney stones are caused by oxalates and they are by far the most common factor in kidney stone formation. There is also a large degree of genetic variability in the ability to detoxify the chemicals that produce oxalates. Perhaps twenty percent of the population has a genetic variance that increases their likelihood of producing oxalates, even when not consuming a high-oxalate diet.
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Health

Brain Matter Linked to Introspective Thoughts: Structure of Prefrontal Cortex Helps Humans Think About One's Own Thinking


ScienceDaily
Fri, 17 Sep 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Image © Science/AAASViews of inflated cortical surface showing areas of brain gray matter correlating with introspective accuracy.
A specific region of the brain appears to be larger in individuals who are good at turning their thoughts inward and reflecting upon their decisions, according to new research published in the journal Science. This act of introspection -- or "thinking about your thinking" -- is a key aspect of human consciousness, though scientists have noted plenty of variation in peoples' abilities to introspect.

The new study will be published in the 17 September issue of the journal Science. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

In light of their findings, this team of researchers, led by Prof. Geraint Rees from University College London, suggests that the volume of gray matter in the anterior prefrontal cortex of the brain, which lies right behind our eyes, is a strong indicator of a person's introspective ability. Furthermore, they say the structure of white matter connected to this area is also linked to this process of introspection.

It remains unclear, however, how this relationship between introspection and the two different types of brain matter really works. These findings do not necessarily mean that individuals with greater volume of gray matter in that region of the brain have experienced -- or will experience -- more introspective thoughts than other people. But, they do establish a correlation between the structure of gray and white matter in the prefrontal cortex and the various levels of introspection that individuals may experience.
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Alarm Clock

Riki Ott: Bio-Remediation or Bio-Hazard? Dispersants, Bacteria and Illness in the Gulf

Riki Ott
Huffington Post
Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:28 UTC
Ocean Springs, Mississippi -- A grandmother made me rethink all the bio-remediation hype. The "naturally-occurring oil-eating bacteria" have been newsworthy of late as they are supposedly going to come to the rescue of President Obama and BP and make good on their very premature statement that "the oil is gone."

We were talking about subsurface oil in the Gulf when she said matter-of-factly, "The bacteria are running amok with the dispersants." What? "Those oil-eating bacteria -- I think they're running amok and causing skin rashes." My mind reeled. Could we all have missed something so simple?

The idea was crazy but, in the context of the Gulf situation -- an outbreak of mysterious persistent rashes from southern Louisiana across to just north of Tampa, Florida, coincident with BP's oil and chemical release, it seemed suddenly worthy of investigating.
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