Health & Wellness
"Our capacity to plan and manipulate information in the mind is dependent on our ability to take in the precise order of things." continued Petrides. "Dogs and cats and rats and squirrels have a lot of memory capacity, but their brains probably do not have the ability to capture the precise order of sequences of items. Approximate order is perceived based on salient features such as the stronger impression of the most recently seen item."
Ghetti and her co-investigator, Kristen Lyons, a graduate student in psychology at UC Davis, will present their findings Friday morning, Aug. 17, at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco.
Scientists have demonstrated that dolphins, monkeys and even rats can engage in some form of "metacognition," or an awareness of their own thought processes. But developmental psychologists have assumed that human children do not develop this capability before about age 5.
But a new review of 31 randomized controlled trials published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that so far, only modest evidence supports the use of most medications to raise levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) - good cholesterol. Some are even harmful.
The authors concluded that while efforts to lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL or "bad cholesterol") "have consistently reduced cardiovascular disease risk, HDL-based approaches are much more complex and sometimes disappointing." As a result, "the primary focus should be on LDL," said review co-author Mehdi Shishehbor, D.O., of the Cleveland Clinic.
This isn't merely a nod to the denigrating expression "they all look the same." Indeed, the "cross-race effect" is one of the most well replicated findings in psychological research and can lead to embarrassment, social castigation, or the disturbingly common occurrence of eye-witness misidentifications.
Although a potentially charged experience, the causes of the cross-race effect are unclear. In one camp, psychologists argue that in a society where de facto segregation is the norm, people often don't have much practice with individuals of other racial groups and are thus less capable of recognizing distinguishing features.
Director of the Russian Healthcare Foundation Dmitry Golayev cited at a press conference this statistics of the Ministry of Health and Social Development on Wednesday. Meanwhile, he noted that the official statistics lags behind the real figures about 2.5 times, so that about one million people will be infected with AIDS by the yearend. Golayev noted the importance of implementing the national project for AIDS prevention and treatment. Under the project in 2007 about 30,000 infected people will get necessary medicines, and some of them are prisoners. About 20 million people take AIDS tests every year. "The earlier the treatment will begin, the higher chances are to live a full life," Golayev pointed out.
The analysis found that echinacea reduced the risk of catching a cold by 58 percent, and that the duration of a cold was significantly reduced.
NutraSweet Co., known primarily for imbuing diet pop with sugariness, this month launched its first offensive into another big sugar-substitute market: tabletop sweeteners -- the little packets that coffee and tea drinkers dump into their beverages.