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Study Uses Brain Scans to Discover How Children 'Read' Faces


PhysOrg
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:00 UTC
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© AhtamResearcher Banu Ahtam guides 9 year old Oscar Nathan through the study.
Oxford University scientists are using brain-scanning technology to understand how we learn to recognize and 'read' faces as children.

The research will also investigate whether there are any differences in the way people with autism spectrum disorders respond to seeing faces.

'Faces are really very similar in their basic features, but we are very good at recognizing different faces instantly. The brain has to be very specialized to be able to do this quickly and accurately,' says Dr Jennifer Swettenham, who is leading the study.

The ability to recognize faces is very important for communication and socializing. We need to be able to recognize people's facial features, and also understand their emotions, respond to where they are looking, and many other signs and indications.
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Attention

World's largest aspartame maker Ajinomoto is trying to rename it 'Aminosweet'!

Stephen Fox
OpEd News
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:52 UTC
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© Unknown
If you have read any of my articles at OpEdNews over the past two years, or any by the many physicians who have also written articles and letters to the FDA commissioner, you will recognize what a bunch of stupid gobbledegook appears below. These critics of aspartame include Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, Internist H.J. Roberts, Psychiatrist Ralph Walton, and Pediatrician Kenneth Stoller, all medical doctors.

This new press release is one of the dumbest things I have ever read, but no surprise: aspartame is at the heart of the many reasons that Americans have gotten dumber, after decades of the "dumbing down" processes....
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Mathematical Abilities Examined in Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

Catherine Lebel
Medical News Today
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:00 UTC
Children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) have a number of cognitive deficits, but mathematical ability seems particularly damaged. Little is known about the brain structures related to mathematical deficits in children with FASD. A new study that used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to investigate the relationship between mathematical skills and brain white matter structure in children with FASD supports the importance of the left parietal area for mathematical tasks.

Results will be published in the February 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

"Children with FASD have learning difficulties with reading, memory, executive functioning, attention, and mathematics," said Christian Beaulieu, associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at the University of Alberta and senior author for the study.

"Specific deficits in mathematics exist even when their global deficits are taken into account," added Claire D. Coles, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine. "Children with FASD are similar in their presentation to children with nonverbal learning disabilities, which are sometimes associated with visual/spatial deficits and math deficits; one of the factors thought to produce these effects is deficits in white matter integrity."
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Sounds Can Penetrate Deep Sleep and Enhance Associated Memories Upon Waking


ScienceDaily
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:00 UTC
They were in a deep sleep, yet sounds, such as a teakettle whistle and a cat's meow, somehow penetrated their slumber.

The 25 sounds presented during the nap were reminders of earlier spatial learning, though the Northwestern University research participants were unaware of the sounds as they slept.

Yet, upon waking, memory tests showed that spatial memories had changed. The participants were more accurate in dragging an object to the correct location on a computer screen for the 25 images whose corresponding sounds were presented during sleep (such as a muffled explosion for a photo of dynamite) than for another 25 matched objects.

"The research strongly suggests that we don't shut down our minds during deep sleep," said John Rudoy, lead author of the study and a neuroscience Ph.D. student at Northwestern. "Rather this is an important time for consolidating memories."
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New Cause of Osteoporosis: Mutation in a miroRNA


ScienceDaily
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:00 UTC
Many biological processes are controlled by small molecules known as microRNAs, which work by suppressing the expression of specific sets of genes. Xiang-Hang Luo and colleagues, at Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, People's Republic of China, have now identified a previously unknown microRNA (miR-2861) as crucial to bone maintenance in mice and humans.

Of clinical importance, expression of functional miR-2861 was absent in two related adolescents with primary osteoporosis.

Several lines of evidence determined the key role of miR-2861 in maintaining bone. First, miR-2861 promoted the in vitro development of a mouse stromal cell line into the cells responsible for bone formation. Second, in mice, in vivo silencing of miR-2861 inhibited bone formation and decreased bone mass. Last, analysis of ten patients with primary osteoporosis revealed two related adolescents in whom disease was caused by a mutation in the miR-2861 precursor (pre-miR-2861) that blocked expression of miR-2861.

These data led the authors to conclude that miR-2861 has an important role in controlling the generation of the cells responsible for bone formation and that defects in the processing of its precursor can cause osteoporosis.
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Family

Ancestry Attracts, but Love Is Blind


ScienceDaily
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:00 UTC
People preferentially marry those with similar ancestry, but their decisions are not necessarily based on hair, eye or skin colour. Research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, shows that Mexicans mate according to proportions of Native American to European ancestry, while Puerto Ricans are more likely to settle down with someone carrying a similar mix of African and European genes.

Neil Risch, from the University of California, San Francisco, worked with a team of researchers to study the effects of ancestry on partner choice in Mexicans and Puerto Ricans living in their own countries or in the USA. The subjects came from The Genetics of Asthma in Latino Americans (GALA) study, conducted by Risch's UCSF colleague, Esteban Gonzalez Burchard. Risch said, "Latin America provides a unique opportunity to study population structure and non-random mating, due to the historical confluence of European, Native American and African racial groups over the past five centuries. We found that assortative mating, that is partner choice based on a shared ancestry, is very common in these populations."

Quite how our DNA influences our desires remains mysterious. Risch and his colleagues did not find that geography or socio-economic status could explain the ancestral influence on romance, and factors like hair, eye and skin colour individually only had a minor role. According to Burchard, "Certainly physical characteristics, such as skin pigment, hair texture, eye color, and other physical features are correlated with ancestry and are likely to be factors in mate selection. However, the spouse correlation for these traits and the correlation of these traits with ancestry were actually below what would be required to fully explain the phenomenon."
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Arrow Down

Aspirin Kills 400% More People than H1N1 Swine Flu

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:00 UTC
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© Wiki Commons
The CDC now reports that nearly 4,000 Americans have been killed by H1N1 swine flu. This number is supposed to sound big and scary, motivating millions of people to go out and pay good money to be injected with untested, unproven H1N1 vaccines. But let's put the number in perspective: Did you know that more than four times as many people are killed each year by common NSAID painkillers like aspirin?

The July 1998 issue of The American Journal of Medicine explains it as follows:
"Conservative calculations estimate that approximately 107,000 patients are hospitalized annually for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-related gastrointestinal (GI) complications and at least 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur each year among arthritis patients alone." (Singh Gurkirpal, MD, "Recent Considerations in Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Gastropathy", The American Journal of Medicine, July 27, 1998, p. 31S)
So for every person the CDC claims was killed by H1N1 swine flu this year, common painkillers like aspirin have killed four! Yet you don't see the CDC, FDA, WHO or mainstream media running around screaming about the extreme dangers of aspirin, do you? All those deaths apparently don't matter. Only swine flu deaths lead to hysteria.
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Health

Braking News: Particles from Car Brakes Harm Lung Cells


Science Daily
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:55 UTC
Real-life particles released by car brake pads can harm lung cells in vitro. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology found that heavy braking, as in an emergency stop, caused the most damage, but normal breaking and even close proximity to a disengaged brake resulted in potentially dangerous cellular stress.

Barbara Rothen-Rutishauser and Peter Gehr from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and Michael Riediker from the Institute for Work and Health, Lausanne, Switzerland, worked with a team of researchers to study the effects of brake particles on cultured lung cells placed in a chamber close to the axle of a car. They said, "Brake wear contributes up to 20% of total traffic emissions, but the health effects of brake particles remain largely unstudied. We've found that the metals in brake wear particles can damage junctions between cells by a mechanism involving oxidative stress".
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Pills

Psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein received nearly $500,000 to promote dangerous anti-psychotics

Christina Jewett & Sam Roe
ProPublica & Chicago Tribune
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:53 UTC
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© Tribune photo by Abel Uribe / July 30, 2009Chanile Hayes says Dr. Michael Reinstein told her taking the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel would help her lose weight. Instead, she says, she went from 140 pounds to nearly 300 pounds within two years.
Company paid him to promote Seroquel despite misgivings about his research

Executives inside pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca faced a high-stakes dilemma.

On one hand, Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein was bringing the company a small fortune in sales and was conducting research that made one of its most promising drugs look spectacular.

On the other, some worried that his research findings might be too good to be true.

As Reinstein grew irritated with what he perceived as the company's slights, a top executive outlined the scenario in an e-mail to colleagues.

"If he is in fact worth half a billion dollars to (AstraZeneca)," the company's U.S. sales chief wrote in 2001, "we need to put him in a different category." To avoid scaring Reinstein away, he said, the firm should answer "his every query and satisfy any of his quirky behaviors."

Putting aside its concerns, AstraZeneca would continue its relationship with Reinstein, paying him $490,000 over a decade to travel the nation promoting its best-selling antipsychotic drug, Seroquel. In return, Reinstein provided the company a vast customer base: thousands of mentally ill residents in Chicago-area nursing homes.
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Better Earth

"WTF Obama! Get Big Ag Players Out of Government"

Katherine Gustafson
FoodChange.org
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:00 UTC
Image
© Dan4th via flickr
The fact that there's a revolving door between government and industry will come as news to no one. What is surprising (though hardly, says the cynical devil on my shoulder) is that President Obama continues to spin it around.

What ever happened to "No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years" (as stated in Obama's ethics rules)?

Whatever happened to "We'll tell ConAgra that it's not the Department of Agribusiness. It's the Department of Agriculture. We're going to put the people's interests ahead of the special interests" (speech to the Iowa Farmers Union, November 2007)?
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