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.
Health & Wellness
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.
© iStockphoto
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
© Image © Science/AAAS
Views of inflated cortical surface showing areas of brain gray matter correlating with introspective accuracy.
Views of inflated cortical surface showing areas of brain gray matter correlating with introspective accuracy.
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.
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.
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.
© Today's Zaman
"As the levels of particulate matter air pollution increased, more cardiac arrests occurred," lead researcher Dr. Robert A Silverman of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, in New York, told Reuters Health in an e-mail.
Research had already linked air pollution to health problems such as cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, asthma and chronic lung disease. But Silverman and his colleagues wanted to know if these airborne chemicals, particularly tiny particles and liquid droplets produced by the combustion of cars and coal-fired power plants, might also raise the risk of sudden death from a cardiac arrest -- a severe event brought on when the heart muscle's rhythm becomes erratic. Cardiac arrest accounts for more than 300,000 deaths in the US each year.
When cardiac arrests occur outside of the hospital, victims typically have less than eight percent chance of survival. So the team compared readings from air quality monitors around New York City with the records of 8,216 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests that happened between 2002 and 2006.
Comment: But for god's sake, don't smoke!
© Columbia Pictures
Julia Roberts is lovely and all, but this summer's Eat Pray Love might have been more successful if there was a little less eating and praying and lot more Javier Bardem, a new study suggests.
Julia Roberts is lovely and all, but this summer's Eat Pray Love might have been more successful if there was a little less eating and praying and lot more Javier Bardem, a new study suggests.
What makes a movie appealing? Is it having a lead actor or actress you can identify with, or an opposite-sex lead you find romantically desirable?
Newly published research, which both refutes and confirms conventional wisdom, points strongly to the latter.
"Star power does play a relevant role in driving consumers' evaluations," Michela Addis of the University of Rome 3 and Morris Holbrook of Columbia University report in the journal Psychology & Marketing. "But this role seems to depend more on attraction than identification, at least with regard to actual age and gender.
"Indeed, stars' emotional impacts on audiences, and their consequently high salaries, appear to derive from their power as romantic and sexually attractive models. Hence, star power ... should be interpreted as romantic appeal."
The excitement of the season had just begun, and then we heard the news: oil in the water, lots of oil killing lots of water. It is too shocking to understand. Never in the millennium of our tradition have we thought it possible for the water to die, but it is true.
Chief Walter Meganack
Traditional Village Chief
Port Graham NativeVillage, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
(National Wildlife Federation, 1990)
Psychopaths Rule Our World
We are now part of a giant experiment on massive chemical toxicity exposure, where insanity, wishful thinking, denial, and outright lies run the show. Where our leaders are completely out of touch with reality and rather than guidance, protection and healing, they offer us disinformation and manipulation. How on earth did we allow this to happen? Then again, what do we expect in a world where psychopathic corporate interests dominate almost every area of life?
An invasive cancer has spread throughout our global society. Mother nature too has succumbed to the effects of this destructive ideology and now carries the seeds of ecological disaster in her womb. Despite all their machinations and carefully laid plans, the hubris and supreme self-interest of the psychopaths that rule our world have set humanity on a course for extinction. Who benefits when there are no people left to rule and control?
In the words of psychologist Andrew M. Lobaczweski:
Chief Walter Meganack
Traditional Village Chief
Port Graham NativeVillage, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska
(National Wildlife Federation, 1990)
Psychopaths Rule Our World
We are now part of a giant experiment on massive chemical toxicity exposure, where insanity, wishful thinking, denial, and outright lies run the show. Where our leaders are completely out of touch with reality and rather than guidance, protection and healing, they offer us disinformation and manipulation. How on earth did we allow this to happen? Then again, what do we expect in a world where psychopathic corporate interests dominate almost every area of life?
An invasive cancer has spread throughout our global society. Mother nature too has succumbed to the effects of this destructive ideology and now carries the seeds of ecological disaster in her womb. Despite all their machinations and carefully laid plans, the hubris and supreme self-interest of the psychopaths that rule our world have set humanity on a course for extinction. Who benefits when there are no people left to rule and control?
In the words of psychologist Andrew M. Lobaczweski:
[W]hat happens when psychopaths achieve global domination? Goaded by their character, such people thirst for just that [...] But germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.
If such and many managerial positions are assumed by individuals deprived of sufficient abilities to feel and understand most other people, and who also betray deficiencies as regards technical imagination and practical skills - faculties indispensable for governing economic and political matters - this must result in an exceptionally serious crisis in all areas, both within the country in question and with regard to international relations. -Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes.
Comment: For more information on this topic, how to detoxify and eat healthy, don't miss our upcoming issue of the Dot Connector Magazine.
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.