Morality Study Narrows Gap Between Mind And Brain

Scientists have found a surprising link between magnets and morality. A person's moral judgments can be changed almost instantly by delivering a magnetic pulse to an area of the brain near the right ear, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


(..)

The fact that scientists can adjust morality with a magnet may be disconcerting to people who view morality as a lofty and immutable human trait, says Joshua Greene, psychologist at Harvard University. But that view isn't accurate, he says.

"Moral judgment is just a brain process," he says. "That's precisely why it's possible for these researchers to influence it using electromagnetic pulses on the surface of the brain."

The new study is really part of a much larger effort by scientists to explain how the brain creates moral judgments, Greene says. The scientists are trying to take concepts such as morality, which philosophers once attributed to the human soul, and "break it down in mechanical terms."

If something as complex as morality has a mechanical explanation, Green says, it will be hard to argue that people have, or need, a soul.

The Bobby McFerrin Plan for Creating a Remarkable Business

This is a guest post from Pamela Wilson at Copyblogger, who runs Big Brand System, which helps small businesses "grow with design and marketing. It really is an interesting post and makes me want to go see Bobby McFerrin, whose CD, Circle Songs, remains one of my favorites.
Uvealblues

I just returned from a Bobby McFerrin concert, and now I know how to run my new business. No, this post isn’t about “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Bobby McFerrin is much more than that.
You see, I’m a little nervous. For 23 years, I’ve made my income the same way — in a service business, as a graphic designer. A client comes to me for design work. I create something for them, and bill for my time. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat for 23 years, and you have a career as a successful designer.
But that’s all about to change.

Before They Were Titans, Moguls and Newsmakers, These People Were...Rejected

Teenagers who face rejection will be joining good company, including Nobel laureates, billionaire philanthropists, university presidents, constitutional scholars, best-selling authors and other leaders of business, media and the arts who once received college or graduate-school rejection letters of their own. 

Both Warren Buffett and "Today" show host Meredith Vieira say that while being rejected by the school of their dreams was devastating, it launched them on a path to meeting life-changing mentors. Harold Varmus, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, says getting rejected twice by Harvard Medical School, where a dean advised him to enlist in the military, was soon forgotten as he plunged into his studies at Columbia University's med school. For other college rejects, from Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy and entrepreneur Ted Turner to broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, the turndowns were minor footnotes, just ones they still remember and will talk about.

Rejections aren't uncommon. Harvard accepts only a little more than 7% of the 29,000 undergraduate applications it receives each year, and Stanford's acceptance rate is about the same.
"The truth is, everything that has happened in my life...that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better," Mr. Buffett says. With the exception of health problems, he says, setbacks teach "lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity."
(..)
Mr. Bollinger, a First Amendment author and scholar. "The question really is, who at the end of the day is going to make the determination about what your talents are, and what your interests are? That has to be you."

(..)
Time puts rejection letters in perspective, says Ted Turner. He received dual rejections as a teenager, by Princeton and Harvard, he says in an interview. The future America's Cup winner attended Brown University, where he became captain of the sailing team. He left college after his father cut off financial support, and joined his father's billboard company, which he built into the media empire that spawned CNN. Brown has since awarded him a bachelor's degree.
Tragedies later had a greater impact on his life, he says, including the loss of his father to suicide and his teenage sister to illness. "A rejection letter doesn't even come close to losing loved ones in your family. That is the hard stuff to survive," Mr. Turner says. "I want to be sure to make this point: I did everything I did without a college degree," he says. While it is better to have one, "you can be successful without it."

Decoding an Ancient Therapy

High-Tech Tools Show How Acupuncture Works in Treating Arthritis, Back Pain, Other Ills

As fanciful as that seems, acupuncture does have real effects on the human body, which scientists are documenting using high-tech tools. Neuroimaging studies show that it seems to calm areas of the brain that register pain and activate those involved in rest and recuperation. Doppler ultrasound shows that acupuncture increases blood flow in treated areas. Thermal imaging shows that it can make inflammation subside.
Scientists are also finding parallels between the ancient concepts and modern anatomy. Many of the 365 acupuncture points correspond to nerve bundles or muscle trigger points. Several meridians track major arteries and nerves. "If people have a heart attack, the pain will radiate up across the chest and down the left arm. That's where the heart meridian goes," says Peter Dorsher, a specialist in pain management and rehabilitation at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. "Gallbladder pain will radiate to the right upper shoulder, just where the gallbladder meridian goes."
..
Diagnoses are complicated. An acupuncturist will examine a patient's tongue and take three different pulses on each wrist, as well as asking questions about digestion, sleep and other habits, before determining which meridians may be blocked and where to place the needles. The 14 meridians are thought to be based on the rivers of China, and the 365 points may represent the days of the year. "Invaders" such as wind, cold, heat, dampness, dryness factor into illness, so can five phases known as fire, earth, metal, water and wood.

America’s Real Dream Team

Went to a big Washington dinner last week. You know the kind: Large hall; black ties; long dresses. But this was no ordinary dinner. There were 40 guests of honor. So here’s my Sunday news quiz: I’ll give you the names of most of the honorees, and you tell me what dinner I was at. Ready?

Linda Zhou, Alice Wei Zhao, Lori Ying, Angela Yu-Yun Yeung, Lynnelle Lin Ye, Kevin Young Xu, Benjamin Chang Sun, Jane Yoonhae Suh, Katheryn Cheng Shi, Sunanda Sharma, Sarine Gayaneh Shahmirian, Arjun Ranganath Puranik, Raman Venkat Nelakant, Akhil Mathew, Paul Masih Das, David Chienyun Liu, Elisa Bisi Lin, Yifan Li, Lanair Amaad Lett, Ruoyi Jiang, Otana Agape Jakpor, Peter Danming Hu, Yale Wang Fan, Yuval Yaacov Calev, Levent Alpoge, John Vincenzo Capodilupo and Namrata Anand.
No, sorry, it was not a dinner of the China-India Friendship League. Give up?
O.K. All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards dinner was Tuesday, and, as you can see from the above list, most finalists hailed from immigrant families, largely from Asia.

This isn’t complicated. In today’s wired world, the most important economic competition is no longer between countries or companies. The most important economic competition is actually between you and your own imagination. Because what your kids imagine, they can now act on farther, faster, cheaper than ever before — as individuals. Today, just about everything is becoming a commodity, except imagination, except the ability to spark new ideas.

Ladida iphone app

Researchers Turn Mosquitoes Into Flying Vaccinators

Here's a study to file under "unworkable but very cool." A group of Japanese researchers has developed a mosquito that spreads vaccine instead of disease. Even the researchers admit, however, that regulatory and ethical problems will prevent the critters from ever taking wing—at least for the delivery of human vaccines.

Talk Deeply, Be Happy?

Would you be happier if you spent more time discussing the state of the world and the meaning of life — and less time talking about the weather?

It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who published a study on the subject.
(..)
Small talk made up only 10 percent of the happiest person’s conversations, while it made up almost three times as much –- or 28.3 percent –- of the unhappiest person’s conversations.

Hit the Floor and Give Me a Dozen...Pillar Bridges

The regimen is called "core strength," and it's all the rage in fitness. Elite athletes from marathon runners to baseball pitchers are adopting core-strength workouts—that is, bolstering the muscles encasing their torsos from shoulder to thigh—in pursuit of improved performance and fewer injuries. Fitness trainers are preaching it to the masses. Books like "Core Performance," by NFL Players Association chief fitness trainer Mark Verstegen, hawk its benefits.

Blinded Merseyside soldier 'sees' with tongue device

A Merseyside soldier blinded by a grenade in Iraq has said his life has been turned around by technology that allows him to "see" with his tongue.

Partying to Change the World

Maybe the most common question I get from readers is: What can I do?

They’ve read about malaria, or mass rape, or AIDS orphans, and they want to make a difference. Should they call the White House? Write a check? Howl in hopeless despair?
There’s never a perfect answer, but here’s one ingenious approach: Throw a party!

Let’s back up. In 2004, a Colorado woman named Torkin Wakefield, a Peace Corps veteran with a lifetime of experience in aid work, was temporarily living in Uganda. Her daughter, Devin Hibbard, then just out of graduate school, came to visit, and they strolled together through a slum in Kampala, the capital.

(..)
BeadforLife reflects several fascinating trends in the battle against global poverty. One is the increasing interest in using businesses and entrepreneurship to create jobs and a more sustainable economic liftoff. A second is a focus on women, because of evidence that they are more likely than men to invest business profits in their children’s education and health. A third is the growing attempt to engage American supporters by asking them to do something other than just writing checks.
Increasingly, Torkin and Devin have also been using the bead parties to try to educate the jewelry buyers about Africa. To go with the beads, they’ve developed a curriculum on global poverty for American schools. They’ve also been taking Americans to Africa to see the work firsthand.
“At first, we thought BeadforLife was just for Ugandans,” Torkin said. “Then we realized that a lot of this was about helping Americans get involved.”

Diabetes Heart Treatments May Cause Harm

Three aggressive treatment strategies that doctors had expected would prevent heart attacks among people with Type 2 diabetes and some who are the verge of developing it have proven to be ineffective or even harmful, new studies show.

Supermarket spinach may have some advantages

 Supermarket produce doesn't compare to home-grown fruits and vegetables, or even the stuff found at farmers markets, right?
Maybe not. Spinach, it seems, might do better, nutrient-wise, under cool temperatures and continuous fluorescent light than in darkness, according to a new study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Women Who Drink Gain Less Weight

Dieters are often advised to stop drinking alcohol to avoid the extra calories lurking in a glass of wine or a favorite cocktail. But new research suggests that women who regularly consume moderate amounts of alcohol are less likely to gain weight than nondrinkers and are at lower risk for obesity.

(..)
Over the course of the study, 41 percent of the women became overweight or obese. Although alcohol is packed with calories (about 150 in a six-ounce glass of wine), the nondrinkers in the study actually gained more weight over time: nine pounds, on average, compared with an average gain of about three pounds among regular moderate drinkers. The risk of becoming overweight was almost 30 percent lower for women who consumed one or two alcohol beverages a day, compared with nondrinkers.
(.)
The trend toward less weight gain among drinkers doesn’t appear to hold true for men. A 2003 study of British men showed that regular drinkers gained more weight than nondrinkers. Studies suggest that drinking alcohol has different effects on eating habits among men and women. Men typically add alcohol to their daily caloric intake, whereas women are more likely to substitute alcohol for food. In the Archives study, women who drank alcohol reported fewer calories from food sources, particularly carbohydrates.

Low Levels of Vitamin D Linked to Muscle Fat, Decreased Strength in Young People

ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2010) — A ground-breaking study published in the March 2010 Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found an astonishing 59 per cent of study subjects had too little Vitamin D in their blood. Nearly a quarter of the group had serious deficiencies (less than 20 ng/ml) of this important vitamin. Since Vitamin D insufficiency is linked to increased body fat, decreased muscle strength and a range of disorders, this is a serious health issue.

Researchers chase 3D without the glasses

It’s the talk of consumer electronics and gaming. Depending on who you ask, 3D could change the way we watch TV and play computer games, but there’s one thing it seems everyone is agreed on: who wants to wear those goofy glasses?  It turns out you might not have to

Are belly bacteria making us overeat?

EMORY (US)—Too many calories and not enough exercise may not be the only culprits in the weight gain epidemic. Intestinal bacteria also may play a role in human obesity and metabolic disease

Offering Hope for Tissue Regeneration

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2010) — Researchers at Rhode Island Hospital have discovered how cells communicate with each other during times of cellular injury. The findings shed new light on how the body repairs itself when organs become diseased, through small particles known as microvesicles, and offers hope for tissue regeneration.

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory

Winter Training: Faster and Safer Indoors?

The sad answer, exercise researchers say, is that you really cannot get the same training effect with indoor substitutes. That’s not to say that indoor training is useless, but rather that it has real limitations, with differences that sometimes are subtle, but significant.

Even More Reasons to Get a Move On

Regular exercise is the only well-established fountain of youth, and it’s free. What, I’d like to know, will persuade the majority of Americans who remain sedentary to get off their duffs and give their bodies the workout they deserve?

If Free Works on the Internet, Can It Work for Health Insurance ?

Here is the bottom line. Would consumers and businesses commit to do business with companies that offer incentives and subsidies built around health insurance coverage ? And what if health insurance became a value add rather than a primary product ? Would a service from companies that are big enough to self insure and add their customers to their corporate health care programs change the dynamics and economics of health care ? Would it create enough competition to force traditional insurance companies to change their ways ?

Two Laptops Take Images to Another Dimension

If switching from standard to high-definition television wasn’t confusing enough, there’s another wave of TV technology on the horizon: 3D. But 3D TVs and much of the 3D content won’t be available until later this year, and even then most of these sets will be pricey and will require people to wear special glasses for viewing. If you can’t wait for a 3D TV to hit your living room, you can get a preview of what’s to come with the latest in 3D laptops.

African poverty is falling

Xavier Sala-i-Martin and Maxim Pinkovskiy report:

The conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. Using the methodology of Pinkovskiy and Sala-i-Martin (2009), we estimate income distributions, poverty rates, and inequality and welfare indices for African countries for the period 1970-2006. We show that: (1) African poverty is falling and is falling rapidly; (2) if present trends continue, the poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people with incomes less than one dollar a day will be achieved on time; (3) the growth spurt that began in 1995 decreased African income inequality instead of increasing it; (4) African poverty reduction is remarkably general: it cannot be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic.

Branford Marsalis has something to say!

Rwanda's Genocide: The Untold Story

'The whites were stationed at a height, and first they got us out of hiding with their shots. . . . They stopped when the Interahamwe [the Hutu militia] came, and started again when we resisted.'

Evidence That Little Touches Do Mean So Much

Psychologists have long studied the grunts and winks of nonverbal communication, the vocal tones and facial expressions that carry emotion. A warm tone of voice, a hostile stare — both have the same meaning in Terre Haute or Timbuktu, and are among dozens of signals that form a universal human vocabular

But in recent years some researchers have begun to focus on a Momentary touches, they say — whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm — can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words.

Making a bit of me

A machine that prints organs is coming to market

THE great hope of transplant surgeons is that they will, one day, be able to order replacement body parts on demand. At the moment, a patient may wait months, sometimes years, for an organ from a suitable donor. During that time his condition may worsen. He may even die. The ability to make organs as they are needed would not only relieve suffering but also save lives. And that possibility may be closer with the arrival of the first commercial 3D bio-printer for manufacturing human tissue and organs.

Continuing to Save Sight in 2010

Here is a nice post from Rebecca Saxton, one of the newest and most enthusiastic members of the Orbis team, describing what Orbis is doing in Niger (in the middle of a presidential coup nonetheless!)
uvealblues

(..)

“This is the only chance he has for this surgery. If he doesn’t come in on Monday, he will go blind soon,” said Amelia, citing the fact that with only 13 ophthalmologists in the whole country, and very limited resources, eye care in rural areas of Niger is almost non-existent.

I immediately left the room to find translators. I sat with him for a while, walking several different translators over to him to explain the importance of his appointment on Monday, and making sure he had a way of getting to the hospital in Niamey. I was afraid that with the information switching from English to French to Zarma, the unfamiliar faces, and the general apprehension that people have around doctors that the message would not get across. When he walked out, I was afraid we would never see him again.

Sitting from my back office aboard the Flying Eye Hospital, I can see into the room where Moussa is currently getting prepped for surgery. As in all of our cases, he will be operated on by one of our volunteer doctors, along with 2 local doctors from Niger. This way, when we fly out, the local doctors will have better capability to deal with cases like Moussa’s.

Transplants That Do Their Job, Then Fade Away

This is so awesome!!!!
uvealblues

Jonathan Nuñez was 8 months old when a liver transplant saved his life. Three years later, his body rejected the transplant, attacking it so fiercely that it wasted away and vanished, leaving barely a trace.

That result, seemingly a disaster, was exactly what his doctors had hoped for. They had deliberately withdrawn Jonathan’s antirejection medicine because he no longer needed the transplant. His own liver had — as planned — regenerated.

Division and Its Discontents

A nice meditation on division can be found here.

Ally for the Poor in an Unlikely Corner

Andrew Witty is not quite as young or as buff as Anderson Cooper, but he does do interviews in shirtsleeves from the slums of Nairobi and rural hospitals in Uganda.

Andrew Witty, named GlaxoSmithKline's chief executive in 2008.

What makes that unusual is that Mr. Witty is not a roving CNN anchor, but the chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s second-largest drug company.
Besides being the youngest person in such a post — he was appointed in 2008 at age 43 —
he is also making a name for himself by doing more for the world’s poor than any other leader of a colossus of Big Pharma.

Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars have removed the song from their playbooks.

Gibbons to Deliver Emergency State of State

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) -- Nevada's budget is so far out of balance that by one account the state could lay off every worker paid from the general fund and still be $300 million in the red. The economic downturn has hit so hard that prisons may be closed, entire colleges shuttered and thousands left without jobs.
(..)
Lynn Hettrick, deputy chief of staff, said the governor wants to try to avoid more layoffs, because the state must pay the full cost of unemployment benefits for affected workers. Nevada, with a 13 percent unemployment rate, is on track to borrow $1 billion from the federal government to meet jobless claims because its unemployment insurance trust fund has gone broke.
(..)

Still, budget cuts could result in thousands of layoffs, mainly teachers, with the shock waves reverberating through Nevada for years to come.
''Most people living in Nevada have never experienced anything like this,'' said Guy Rocha, a historian and former state archivist. ''The last time we had an economic crisis of this magnitude was the Great Depression.''

From ‘Oprah’ to Building a Sisterhood in Congo

This is an inspirational story worth reading in its entirety in the link below...
uvealblues

Five years ago, Lisa Shannon watched “Oprah” and learned about the savage, forgotten war here in eastern Congo, played out in massacres and mass rape. That show transformed Lisa’s life, costing her a good business, a beloved fiancé, and a comfortable home in Portland, Ore. — but giving her a chance to save lives in Congo.
(..)
“Technically, I had a good life before, but I wasn’t very happy,” she mused. “Now I feel I have much more of a sense of meaning.”
Maybe that’s why I gravitate toward Lisa’s story. In a land where so many “responsible” leaders eschew responsibility, Lisa has gone out of her way to assume responsibility and try to make a difference. Along with an unbelievable cast of plucky Congolese survivors such as Generose, she evokes hope.

Rules Worth Following, for Everyone’s Sake

Read about Michael Pollan's latest book here.

In the more than four decades that I have been reading and writing about the findings of nutritional science, I have come across nothing more intelligent, sensible and simple to follow than the 64 principles outlined in a slender, easy-to-digest new book called “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” by Michael Pollan.

The Miracle of Vitamin D: Sound Science, or Hype?

Yet despite the health potential of vitamin D, as many as half of all adults and children are said to have less than optimum levels and as many as 10 percent of children are highly deficient, according to a 2008 report in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
As a result, doctors are increasingly testing their patients’ vitamin D levels and prescribing daily supplements to raise them. According to the lab company Quest Diagnostics, orders for vitamin D tests surged more than 50 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from the same quarter a year earlier. And in 2008, consumers bought $235 million worth of vitamin D supplements, up from $40 million in 2001, according to Nutrition Business Journal.
But don’t start gobbling down vitamin D supplements just yet. The

The Scales Can Lie: Hidden Fat

New Study Argues Even Thin People Can Face Health Risks From Fat; It's 'Normal Weight Obesity'

Among some of the Mayo Clinic study's findings: High body fat among normal-weight men and women was associated with a nearly four-fold increase in the risk for metabolic syndrome—a cluster of abnormalities including elevated blood sugar and blood pressure. This syndrome is common among people who are obese and is an increasingly important precursor to diabetes and cardiovascular disease. For women, high body fat meant a heightened risk of being diagnosed with cardiovascular disease over the course of the study. Both men and women had a higher risk of abnormal cholesterol and men with high body fat were more likely to develop high blood pressure. 

(..)

The findings of the Mayo study, which was published in November in the European Heart Journal, suggest that reducing heart risk requires increasing the percentage of lean muscle mass at the expense of body fat. That underscores the importance of exercise in maintaining cardiovascular health—including weight lifting and other resistance training, which helps build lean body mass.

Exercise: In Women, Training for a Sharper Mind

Older women who did an hour or two of strength training exercises each week had improved cognitive function a year later, scoring higher on tests of the brain processes responsible for planning and executing tasks, a new study has found.

What Could You Live Without?

Another thought provoking editorial from Nicholas Kristof
uvealblues
 While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on
“Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal,” Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something.

“What do you want to do?” her mom responded. “Sell our house?”
Warning! Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager. Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.
Eventually, that’s what the family did. The project — crazy, impetuous and utterly inspiring — is chronicled in a book by father and daughter scheduled to be published next month: “The Power of Half.” It’s a book that, frankly, I’d be nervous about leaving around where my own teenage kids might find it. An impressionable child reads this, and the next thing you know your whole family is out on the street.
(..)
“No one expects anyone to sell a house,” said Hannah, now a high school junior who hopes to become a nurse. “That’s kind of a ridiculous thing to do. For us, the house was just something we could live without. It was too big for us. Everyone has too much of something, whether it’s time, talent or treasure. Everyone does have their own half, you just have to find it.”
As for Kevin Salwen, he’s delighted by what has unfolded since that encounter at the red light.
“This is the most self-interested thing we have ever done,” he said. “I’m thrilled that we can help others. I’m blown away by how much it has helped us.”

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Artificial Muscles Restore Ability to Blink, Save Eyesight

Surgeons from UC Davis Medical Center have demonstrated that artificial muscles can restore the ability of patients with facial paralysis to blink, a development that could benefit the thousands of people each year who no longer are able to close their eyelids due to combat-related injuries, stroke, nerve injury or facial surgery

Set Up Your Loved Ones with the Best Tech Tools for Keeping in Touch

Why do you almost never send hand-written letters to loved ones? The effort—locating pen and paper, writing, addressing, and stamping—can seem colossal on any given, always busy, day. But keeping in touch is easier than you (and they) may think.

Botswana Music Guitar "Muhurutsi"

Our Basic Human Pleasures: Food, Sex and Giving

But in any case, nobility can lead to happiness. Professor Haidt notes that one thing that can make a lasting difference to your contentment is to work with others on a cause larger than yourself.

I see that all the time. I interview people who were busy but reluctantly undertook some good cause because (sigh!) it was the right thing to do. Then they found that this “sacrifice” became a huge source of fulfillment and satisfaction.

Brain scans by neuroscientists confirm that altruism carries its own rewards. A team including Dr. Jorge Moll of the National Institutes of Health found that when a research subject was encouraged to think of giving money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasures like eating or sex.

A Blind Mother of Two Who Makes Her Own Way

Rahkiya Rawlins, legally blind since birth, has found ways of navigating the world. 
She has a liquid level indicator, which emits a sound when she’s filling a glass and about to reach the brim. When sweeping the floor, she starts from the corners and works her way to the middle, following set choreography because she cannot see the dirt. She has the layout of at least three supermarkets memorized so she can move from aisle to aisle with no surprises.

The Underlying Tragedy

The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.

How lists of the ‘dumb stuff’ can save us from disaster

I am a checklist fanatic and really appreciate Atul Gawande's persistent attempts to push this idea, especially in health care...
Uvealblues

A recent study in the journal Science showed that rats stop thinking and resort to habit when they are under extreme stress. Humans might well do the same.

Nonetheless we appear to believe that in our professional lives, such stress will produce an adrenalin-fuelled surge of clear and brilliant thought. It doesn’t. And in the ensuing muddle, mistakes – sometimes fatal – are made.

Atul Gawande, a surgeon, Harvard Medical School professor and staff writer for The New Yorker, has written a welcome book to convince us of the distinction between un avoidable failures and those we can avert. The Checklist Manifesto is a slim volume but it is packed with vivid writing heart-stopping anecdotes and statistical surprises.

TRIAGE : Dr. James Orbinski's Humanitarian Dilemma

Medicare and the Mayo Clinic

President Obama last year praised the Mayo Clinic as a "classic example" of how a health-care provider can offer "better outcomes" at lower cost. Then what should Americans think about the famous Minnesota medical center's decision to take fewer Medicare patients?
Specifically, Mayo said last week it will no longer accept Medicare patients at one of its primary care clinics in Arizona. Mayo said the decision is part of a two-year pilot program to determine if it should also drop Medicare patients at other facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota, which serve more than 500,000 seniors.
Mayo says it lost $840 million last year treating Medicare patients, the result of the program's low reimbursement rates. Its hospital and four clinics in Arizona—including the Glendale facility—lost $120 million. Providers like Mayo swallow some of these Medicare losses, while also shifting the cost by charging more to private patients and insurers.
Of course, only governments can lose that much money and pretend they don't have to change. "Mayo Clinic loses a substantial amount of money every year due to the reimbursement schedule under Medicare," the institution said. "Decades of underfunding and paying for volume rather than value in Medicare have led us to this decision."

Mayo is probably a leading indicator of where other hospitals and doctors are headed. Physicians on average earn 20% to 30% less from Medicare than they do from private patients, and many are dropping out of the program. While about 92% of family physicians participate in Medicare, only about 73% of those are now accepting new patients. In some specialties—neurology, oncology, gynecology—in places like Manhattan and Washington, patients can struggle to find any doctor who'll accept Medicare.

7 Secret Benefits Of Exercise

Everybody knows that aerobic exercise builds endurance and strengthens the heart, and strength training builds muscles. But did you know that exercise creates new brain cells? Or that it can help ward off cancer and diabetes? Or that it can keep you from accumulating the wrong kind of body fat?

My colleague David Schardt, senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, examines the many health benefits of exercise in depth in the current issue of Nutrition Action Healthletter. Here is some of what he found:

Graphing The Cost of Health Care

Great post on charting cost and outcomes on healthcare in various countries here.. 

The New Chart

The best way to show correlation between two variables is in an XY chart. I got into Chart Busters mode, and plotted X=spending and Y=life expectancy in the following chart. The US and Mexico are colored differently to highlight their non-universal-coverage status, and data points are sized to reflect the number of doctor visits.

Read more: http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/graphing-the-cost-of-health-care/#ixzz0c2hPLJLo

Treat Me, but No Tricks Please

My doctor at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, Joseph Feinberg, seems to share my opinion. “Very often, I think the hot packs, cold packs, ultrasound and electrostimulation are unnecessary,” he said, adding, “For sure, in many cases these modalities are a waste of time.”
So has physical therapy been tested for garden-variety sports injuries like tendinosis? Or is it just accepted without much question by people who urgently want to get better?

New Happiness Research From The UK

There’s a new research study out of the UK on what makes people happy, and it has some interesting results.

UPI's top 50 images of 2009

Pakistani internally displaced children queue for food at a makeshift camp in Swabi, Pakistan, on May 25, 2009. Pakistan's military said Monday it was facing "stiff resistance" as it battled to wrest Swat valley out of Taliban hands, in an offensive that has now scattered 2.38 million civilians. (UPI Photo/Sajjad Ali Qureshi)

UPI 2009 Top 50 News Pictures (50 images)

Cheap Mobile Calls, Even Overseas

What my parents did not realize was that they could have nearly eliminated those charges if they had set up their (in this case) iPhone and BlackBerry to take advantage of mobile Internet calling services: That $1.29-a-minute charge would have gone down to a much more reasonable 2.4 cents a minute (or nothing at all if they were on a Wi-Fi network).

10 Ways to Cut Your Travel Costs This Year

Here are 10 simple steps you can take to help cut your travel costs in 2010.

Blame It on the Brain

The latest neuroscience research suggests spreading resolutions out over time is the best approach.

Given its limitations, New Year's resolutions are exactly the wrong way to change our behavior. It makes no sense to try to quit smoking and lose weight at the same time, or to clean the apartment and give up wine in the same month. Instead, we should respect the feebleness of self-control, and spread our resolutions out over the entire year. Human routines are stubborn things, which helps explain why 88% of all resolutions end in failure, according to a 2007 survey of over 3,000 people conducted by the British psychologist Richard Wiseman. Bad habits are hard to break—and they're impossible to break if we try to break them all at once.
(..)
There's something unsettling about this scientific model of willpower. Most of us assume that self-control is largely a character issue, and that we would follow through on our New Year's resolutions if only we had a bit more discipline. But this research suggests that willpower itself is inherently limited, and that our January promises fail in large part because the brain wasn't built for success.
(..)
Since the most popular New Year's resolution is weight loss, it's important to be aware that starving the brain of calories—even for just a few hours—can impact behavior. Skipping meals makes it significantly harder to summon up the strength to, say, quit cigarettes. Even moderation must be done in moderation.

The final piece of the willpower puzzle is distraction. Research by Walter Mischel at Columbia University and others has demonstrated that people who are better at delaying gratification don't necessarily have more restraint. Instead, they seem to be better at finding ways to get tempting thoughts out of their minds.

A Tale of Two Flagella

I first remembered learning about dinoflagellates, and being fascinated by them, in college zoology...

They are the best of beings; they are the worst of beings. They are animals; they are plants. They are saviors; they are killers. They are predators; they are parasites. They are, in short, dinoflagellates — a large, diverse and eccentric group of (usually) single-celled organisms that are as celebrated as they are feared. And I hereby nominate them for Life-form of the Month: January.

(..)
Some dinoflagellates have eyes. Others give off light. Some, like plants, make energy from the sun; others, like animals, capture and eat their prey. Some do both. Funky.

But even if you’ve never seen a dinoflagellate and wouldn’t recognize one if it waved its flagella at you, you’ve probably come across them, for they impinge on our lives in two important ways, one good, one bad.
(..)

Most dinoflagellates are small — you need a microscope to see them — and even the biggest ones are no bigger than a piece of caviar. But they have gigantic genomes. Some dinoflagellates have genomes containing around 67 times more DNA than the human genome, and 10 times more than the most extravagantly endowed plants. That’s colossal. (Note that lots of DNA doesn’t necessarily mean lots of genes; in terms of gene numbers, it remains to be seen if dinoflagellates are exceptional.)

Even more peculiar is the way they store their DNA. The usual way is to wrap it around molecular spools known as histones. Dinoflagellates don’t have histones. Instead, their genome appears to exist as a liquid crystal matrix. Wackier still: dinoflagellates have unconventional DNA. In most organisms, DNA is composed of the molecules adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. Dinoflagellates often replace thymine with something called hydroxymethyluracil. It’s all most bizarre.

Study Says Women With Mate Get Heavier

It is widely known that women tend to gain weight after giving birth, but now a large study has found evidence that even among childless women, those who live with a mate put on more pounds than those who live without one.


The differences, the scientists found, were stark.

Where Did the Time Go? Do Not Ask the Brain

Either way, studies find, this biological pacemaker has a poor grasp of longer intervals. Time does seem to slow to a trickle during an empty afternoon and race when the brain is engrossed in challenging work. Stimulants, including caffeine, tend to make people feel as if time is passing faster; complex jobs, like doing taxes, can seem to drag on longer than they actually do.

And emotional events — a breakup, a promotion, a transformative trip abroad — tend to be perceived as more recent than they actually are, by months or even years.

In short, some psychologists say, the findings support the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s observation that time “persists merely as a consequence of the events taking place in it.”

Now researchers are finding that the reverse may also be true: if very few events come to mind, then the perception of time does not persist; the brain telescopes the interval that has passed.

Popular Drugs May Help Only Severe Depression

Some widely prescribed drugs for depression provide relief in extreme cases but are no more effective than placebo pills for most patients, according to a new analysis released Tuesday.


(..)
Taken together, previous studies have painted a confusing picture. On one hand, industry-supported trials have generally found that the drugs sharply reduce symptoms. On the other, many studies that were not initially published, or were buried, showed no significant benefits compared with placebos

Willpower as a muscle

Willpower as a muscle

Posted using ShareThis

Letter From London--My American Friends

The first thing I ever heard about Americans was that they all carried guns. Then, when I came across people who’d had direct contact with this ferocious-sounding tribe, I learned that they were actually rather friendly.
(..)
Granted, these visiting Americans often seem to have loud voices, but on closer examination, it’s a little subtler than that. Americans have no fear of being overheard. Civic life in Britain is predicated on the idea that everyone just about conceals his loathing of everyone else. To open your mouth is to risk offending someone. So we mutter and mumble as if surrounded by informers or, more exactly, as if they are living in our heads. In America the right to free speech is exercised freely and cordially. The basic assumption is that nothing you say will offend anyone else because, deep down, everyone is agreed on the premise that America is better than anyplace else. No such belief animates British life.

South Koreans experience what it's like to die -- and live again

Across South Korea, entrepreneurs are holding controversial forums aimed at teaching clients how to better appreciate life by simulating death. They use mortality as a personal motivator.
(..)
Across South Korea, a few entrepreneurs are conducting controversial forums designed to teach clients how to better appreciate life by simulating death. Equal parts Vincent Price and Dale Carnegie, they use mortality as a personal motivator for a variety of behaviors, from a healthier attitude toward work to getting along with family members.

Many firms here see the sessions as an inventive way to stimulate productivity. The Kyobo insurance company, for example, has required all 4,000 of its employees to attend fake funerals like those offered by Jung.

There's another motivation: South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the developed world.

Pirate cash suspected cause of Kenya property boom

NAIROBI, Kenya – Property prices in Nairobi are soaring, and Somali pirates are getting the blame.

The hike in real estate prices in the Kenyan capital has prompted a public outcry and a government investigation this month into property owned by foreigners. The investigation follows allegations that millions of dollars in ransom money paid to Somali pirates are being invested in Kenya, Somalia's southern neighbor and East Africa's largest economy.

Even as housing prices have dropped sharply in the United States, prices in Nairobi have seen two- and three-fold increases the last half decade.

Dave Barry's year in review: 2009

Dave Barry's Hilarious Year End Review Here

To be sure, it was a year that saw plenty of bad news. But in almost every instance, there was offsetting good news:
BAD NEWS: The economy remained critically weak, with rising unemployment, a severely depressed real-estate market, the near-collapse of the domestic automobile industry and the steep decline of the dollar.
GOOD NEWS: Windows 7 sucked less than Vista.
BAD NEWS: The downward spiral of the newspaper industry continued, resulting in the firings of thousands of experienced reporters and an apparently permanent deterioration in the quality of American journalism.
GOOD NEWS: A lot more people were tweeting.
BAD NEWS: Ominous problems loomed abroad as -- among other difficulties -- the Afghanistan war went sour, and Iran threatened to plunge the Middle East and beyond into nuclear war.
GOOD NEWS: They finally got Roman Polanski.
In short, it was a year that we will be happy to put behind us. But before we do, let's swallow our anti-nausea medication and take one last look back, starting with. . . .link

Mammography Screening Is Saving Thousands of Lives, but Will It Survive Medical Malpractice?

There are some very important points made by Dr. Kopans here, especially near the end of  the article in which he discusses  the vagaires of human perception, standard of care, and expert witnesses..
uvealblues

RSNA, 2004

Screening mammograms are saving lives, but the number of radiologists who are willing to read mammograms is decreasing because of their fear of being sued.

There have been recent efforts to highlight the cost of medical malpractice and to try to find ways to reduce these costs (1). However, it is not just the cost of malpractice insurance that is a problem. What I believe is being overlooked is the unjustified psychologic damage that is being inflicted on some physicians, as well as the failure of the legal system to recognize science, with particular emphasis on the detection of breast cancers with mammography. Screening mammograms are saving lives, but the number of radiologists who are willing to read mammograms is decreasing because of their fear of being sued.

A Cheat Sheet for Keeping Resolutions

People Who Have Stuck to Their Vows Share the Secrets of Their Success; the Limits of Willpower.

It is no secret that the odds against keeping a New Year's resolution are steep. Only about 19% of people who make them actually stick to their vows for two years, according to research led by John Norcross, a psychology professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

But those discouraging statistics mask an important truth: The simple act of making a New Year's resolution sharply improves your chances of accomplishing a positive change—by a factor of 10. Among those people who make resolutions in a typical year, 46% keep them for at least six months. That compares with only 4% of a comparable group of people who wanted to make specific changes and thought about doing so, but stopped short of making an actual resolution, says a 2002 study of 282 people, led by Dr. Norcross and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

To explore what separates the winners from the losers, I tracked down several people who have kept their resolutions for a while...

Their stories illustrate several rules for success. Contrary to popular belief, the secret isn't willpower, Dr. Norcross says; people who rely on hopes, wishes or desire actually fail at a higher rate than others. Instead, the successful resolution-keepers made specific, concrete action plans to change their daily behavior.

Good News in the Daily Grind

A good review of the relative health benefits of coffee consumption in the WSJ here.

Warhawk Matt Scott in Nike 'No Excuses' Commercial

Doing Good by Paying Forward

This fall, Kiva, one of the leading organizations in a niche that includes others like DonorsChoose and the eBay-owned MicroPlace, came under fire in a blog post by a microfinance researcher named David Roodman. He took Kiva to task for inaccurate information on its Web site about how the loans, made to entrepreneurs in the developing world by its users, actually worked.
Many of those business owners, it turned out, had received their money already; they weren’t left waiting to, say, repair their motorcycle taxis until enough Americans pitched in with $20 loans.
Kiva has since changed its site to reflect this reality more accurately. But the incident poses a question about other organizations that try to provide a direct connection between you and the beneficiaries of your donations or investments: can any of them truly deliver on the promise that many of them imply — that your dollars will go to the particular people or project leader you’ve picked out?
This week, I put that question to some of the leading organizations in this niche.

Here’s what they had to say.

Ami Vitale Movie of India

Check out this link to see what happens when one combines incredible photographic talent with the newer DSLRs, which can also do video...

Bono and Glen Hansard "Stand By Me"

Would have liked to have been at Grafton street yesterday, where Hansard and Bono were busking for a charity for homeless and people with AIDS, Dublin Simon Community.

.

New Inherited Eye Disease Discovered

ScienceDaily (Dec. 25, 2009) — University of Iowa researchers have found the existence of a new, rare inherited retinal disease. Now the search is on to find the genetic cause, which investigators hope will increase understanding of more common retinal diseases.

A Most Meaningful Gift Idea

Nicholas Kristof Recommendations for charity in the areas of international development and health organization here.

I would of course highly recommend Orbis as well..

This time of year I’m always barraged with inquiries about well-run charitable groups doing effective work. So let me tell you about some of the organizations that I’ve encountered that tackle global poverty in innovative ways.
(..)
So here’s my quirky holiday list of nifty, unknown charities:

Disease Risk Depends on Which Parent a DNA Variant Is Inherited From

Icelandic biologists have discovered that the genetic risk of several common diseases, like Type 2 diabetes and cancer, can depend on which parent a DNA variant is inherited from.
(..)
Another explanation is that the missing heritability lies in aspects of cell biology that are not yet understood.

Decode scientists have found one such instance. They report in Friday’s Nature that a DNA variant increases a person’s risk of Type 2 diabetes by 30 percent if inherited from the father, but reduces the risk by 10 percent if comes from the mother.

In Surgery, a Tangled Tumor Meets Its Match

Here is a description of a 43 hour liver surgery...
(..)

He had come to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center to be treated by Dr. Tomoaki Kato, one of the few surgeons willing to take on such difficult, risky cases. Dr. Kato is an expert in ex vivo resection — taking out organs and operating on them outside the body to remove tumors that cannot be treated in any other way, and then sewing the organs back in. The procedures are grueling surgical marathons that can easily last 30 hours or more, involve a dozen surgeons and anesthesiologists and cost more than $300,000.

“If you don’t do it, the patient will have no chance to live,” Dr. Kato said.

CT Scans Linked to Cancer

The risk of cancer associated with popular CT scans appears to be greater than previously believed, according to two new studies published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The findings support caution against the overuse of CT scans and other medical technologies that use radiation. The studies also bolstered the rationale behind controversial new breast-cancer screening guidelines, which pushed back the recommended age for annual mammograms to 50 from 40. Mammograms also use radiation, but in smaller doses.

IRISH TEACHER HELPS RAISE 3,000 EUROS FOR EYE-CARE PROJECTS IN ETHIOPIA

Dublin, Ireland (December 12, 2009) – Niall Sherlock (25), a teacher and runner from Dublin 15 became the first European to finish the Great Ethiopian Run all the while helping raise 3,000 euros for Orbis Ireland’s eye-care projects in the country.

With close to 40,000 participants, the race was the largest ever race on the African continent.

The Castleknock local completed the 10k race in aid of charity, Orbis Ireland, in a respectable time of 34 minutes and 50 seconds given the challenging conditions.

Lessons From the War Zone

This is a great article, which deserves to be read in its entirety. It speaks generally to the wisdom acquired by expanding one's experiences outside of one's immediate environment, and specifically to the impact on physicians of time spent caring for patients in the "War Zone." Although I have not spent time in such a situation, I am certain that my prior years overseas and now frequent short-term mission trips have tangibly and intangibly helped me become a better physician. Tangibly, I have had the opportunity to manage medically and surgically much more complex disease (and in much higher volume) than seen in the States. Intangibly, the benefit has been along the lines of ingraining the incredible privilege of being a physician--having a "job" in which I can help others quite directly. These experiences have also given me a different perspective on health care than many of my colleagues. Helping others at the edges of survival in marginal governments with minimal infrastructure and government has also led to a jaundiced view of the entities who have insinuated themselves into health care here for selfish interests--the usual suspects--greedy insurance executives, ambulance chasers and other entities who act to erode basic physician-patient trust and care in our society.
Uvealblues

Not long ago I saw my former chairman again for the first time in nearly 20 years. He was older and slightly grayer, and still possessed of the stunning carriage that made him stand out in a room. But as I stood before him, what I remembered was not his having served in Vietnam nor even his remarkable skill, but his profound respect for the humanity of those he cared for, whoever they might have been.

For what he had taught me, first as a doctor-in-training and later as a fully trained surgeon and teacher, and what I recalled were the moments he urged us not to be tardy with our patients, to change out of our surgical scrubs into neat street clothes when leaving the operating rooms to see patients, and to be mindful, always, of even the smallest details of our patients’ experiences.

War, we are now learning, can have wide-ranging, complex and not always positive effects on doctors who serve. But one thing is certain: seeing the casualties of combat does more than produce war doctors capable of caring for any injury. It has the paradoxical power to create doctors with an extraordinary appreciation for all humanity.

Here is another link to discussions on the above article.

The truth about grit

A great article which seems to resonate with what I have seen in life...
uvealblues

Modern science builds the case for an old-fashioned virtue - and uncovers new secrets to success
(..)

In recent years, psychologists have come up with a term to describe this mental trait: grit. Although the idea itself isn’t new - “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” Thomas Edison famously remarked - the researchers are quick to point out that grit isn’t simply about the willingness to work hard. Instead, it’s about setting a specific long-term goal and doing whatever it takes until the goal has been reached. It’s always much easier to give up, but people with grit can keep going.

(..)
The hope among scientists is that a better understanding of grit will allow educators to teach the skill in schools and lead to a generation of grittier children. Parents, of course, have a big role to play as well, since there’s evidence that even offhand comments - such as how a child is praised - can significantly influence the manner in which kids respond to challenges. And it’s not just educators and parents who are interested in grit: the United States Army has supported much of the research, as it searches for new methods of identifying who is best suited for the stress of the battlefield.
(..)
After developing a survey to measure this narrowly defined trait - you can take the survey at www.gritstudy.com - Duckworth set out to test the relevance of grit. The initial evidence suggests that measurements of grit can often be just as predictive of success, if not more, than measurements of intelligence. For instance, in a 2007 study of 175 finalists in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Duckworth found that her simple grit survey was better at predicting whether or not a child would make the final round than an IQ score.
(..)
“I first got interested in grit after watching how my friends fared after college,” Duckworth says. She noticed that the most successful people in her Harvard class chose a goal and stuck with it, while others just flitted from pursuit to pursuit. “Those who were less successful were often just as smart and talented,” Duckworth notes, “but they were constantly changing plans and trying something new. They never stuck with anything long enough to get really good at it.”

Millions in U.S. Drink Dirty Water, Records Show

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.

The Happiness Project

One of my must read blogs over the past several years has been the  "The Happiness Project." The author of this blog, Gretchen Rubin, has a very lively and engaging writing style, characterized by a very personal  authenticity, which sets her blog apart from every other self-improvement type blog I have come across. She now has a new book out as well!
Uvealblues

Requiem for the Dollar

James Grant, the mentor of my main source of financial advice, Bill Fleckenstein, has an excellent editorial in the WSJ...
Uvealblues

Ben S. Bernanke doesn't know how lucky he is. Tongue-lashings from Bernie Sanders, the populist senator from Vermont, are one thing. The hangman's noose is another. Section 19 of this country's founding monetary legislation, the Coinage Act of 1792, prescribed the death penalty for any official who fraudulently debased the people's money. Was the massive printing of dollar bills to lift Wall Street (and the rest of us, too) off the rocks last year a kind of fraud? If the U.S. Senate so determines, it may send Mr. Bernanke back home to Princeton. But not even Ron Paul, the Texas Republican sponsor of a bill to subject the Fed to periodic congressional audits, is calling for the Federal Reserve chairman's head.
(..)
The Fed's M.O. is price control. It fixes the basic money market interest rate, known as the federal funds rate. To arrive at the proper rate, the monetary mandarins conduct their research, prepare their forecast—and take a wild guess, just like the rest of us. Since December 2008, the Fed has imposed a funds rate of 0% to 0.25%. Since March of 2009, it has bought just over $1 trillion of mortgage-backed securities and $300 billion of Treasurys. It has acquired these assets in the customary central-bank manner, i.e., by conjuring into existence the money to pay for them. Yet—a measure of the nation's lingering problems—the broadly defined money supply isn't growing but dwindling.
The Fed's miniature interest rates find favor with debtors, disfavor with savers (that doughty band). All may agree, however, that the bond market has lost such credibility it once had as a monetary-policy voting machine. Whether or not the Fed is cranking too hard on the dollar printing press is, for professional dealers and investors, a moot point. With the cost of borrowing close to zero, they are happy as clams (that is, they can finance their inventories of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities at virtually no cost). The U.S. government securities market has been conscripted into the economic-stimulus program.
(..)
On the matter of comparative monetary policies, the most expressive market is the one that the Fed isn't overtly manipulating. Though Treasury yields might as well be frozen, the gold price is soaring (it lost altitude on Friday). Why has it taken flight? Not on account of an inflation problem. Gold is appreciating in terms of all paper currencies—or, alternatively, paper currencies are depreciating in terms of gold—because the world is losing faith in the tenets of modern central banking. Correctly, the dollar's vast non-American constituency understands that it counts for nothing in the councils of the Fed and the Treasury. If 0% interest rates suit the U.S. economy, 0% will be the rate imposed. Then, too, gold is hard to find and costly to produce. You can materialize dollars with the tap of a computer key.
(..)
A proper gold standard promotes balance in the financial and commercial affairs of participating nations. The pure paper system promotes and perpetuates imbalances. Not since 1976 has this country consumed less than it produced (as measured by the international trade balance): a deficit of 32 years and counting. Why has the shortfall persisted for so long? Because the U.S., uniquely, is allowed to pay its bills in the currency that only it may lawfully print. We send it west, to the central banks of our Asian creditors. And they, obligingly, turn right around and invest the dollars in America's own securities. It's as if the money never left home. Stop to ask yourself, American reader: Is any other nation on earth so blessed as we?
There is, however, a rub. The Asian central banks do not acquire their dollars with nothing. Rather, they buy them with the currency that they themselves print. Some of this money they manage to sweep under the rug, or "sterilize," but a good bit of it enters the local payment stream, where it finances today's rowdy Asian bull markets.

Aid Gives Alternative to African Orphanages

This is a good article, however, I believe that financial aid should also be extended to native Africans who adopt people outside of their family as well..like my friend, Mirriam Magada...
uvealblues

In a country as desperately poor as Malawi, children placed in institutions are often seen as the lucky ones. But even as orphanages have sprung up across Africa with donations from Western churches and charities, the families who care for the vast majority of the continent’s orphans have gotten no help at all, household surveys show. Researchers now say a far better way to assist these bereft children is with simple allocations of cash — $4 to $20 a month in an experimental program under way here in Malawi — given directly to the destitute extended families who take them in. That program could provide grants to eight families looking after some two dozen children for the $1,500 a year it costs to sponsor one child at the Home of Hope, estimated Candace M. Miller, a Boston University professor and a lead researcher in the project.

Time management: How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defense, and 6+ peer-reviewed papers — and finishes by 5:30pm

Great post which echoes much of how I try to organize my time as well uvealbues..
by
Cal Newport - MIT postdoc, author, and founder of Study Hacks...
 
Below, you’ll learn:

• How to use fixed-schedule productivity — similar to the Think, Want, Do Technique — to consciously choose what you want to work on and ignore worthless busywork
• When to say no — and how to do it
• How a $60,000-a-speech professional manages his time
• Case study: How to use email for maximum time productivity

Read on.
(..)
I call this approach fixed-scheduled productivity, and it’s something I’ve been following and preaching since early 2008. The idea is simple:

• Fix your ideal schedule, then work backwards to make everything fit — ruthlessly culling obligations, turning people down, becoming hard to reach, and shedding marginally useful tasks along the way.

'Comfort food' relieves stress: Australian study

SYDNEY (AFP) – A high-fat, high-sugar diet could have the same effect on brain chemistry as mood-altering drugs, giving scientific support to the craving for "comfort food", Australian researchers said on Tuesday.

I know more a few who could have sent this in...

From Postsecret

Organizing the Chaos of Online Travel Tips

..
Then I remembered Gliider, a browser tool that saves and organizes travel research. I downloaded the free add-on for Firefox, which deposited a small arrow icon on my browser navigation bar that, when clicked, opened a sort of file box. There I created a “trip” to Panama City, and began selecting, dragging and dropping text and photos from the Web into handy folders with labels like flights, hotels, see and do.

I could share the stash with friends and e-mail myself PDF dossiers of smartly organized information, ready to print out as a bespoke travel guide. (In January, iPhone users will be able to carry their Gliider content via an app.)

Gliider, I learned, is just one of a growing number of new online tools to help travelers plan where to go and what to do when they get there.

Knowing What’s Worth Paying for in Vitamins

Yet, when it comes to vitamins — which I take only when I feel run down — I turn to name brands like Centrum or Nature Made. My thinking has been: Why mess around with quality when it comes to the essential ABCs?

But now that I’ve done some research, I might soon change my vitamin-buying ways.
Read on to find out why.

(..)

Americans love vitamins. About half of adults take a daily multivitamin, according to industry data. And according to some theories, the economic downturn has inspired them to fortify themselves by swallowing more.

Sales over the last decade had been growing by about 4 percent annually. But this year, as more people are taking their health into their own hands, perhaps hoping to stave off doctor bills, vitamin sales are expected to grow by 8 percent to a total of $9.2 billion, according to Nutrition Business Journal, a market researcher and publisher.

About 42 percent of shoppers purchase their vitamins at natural and specialty retail outlets, like GNC and Whole Foods, according to the journal, while only 23 percent take the discount approach and buy their bottles at supermarkets and club stores. The other 35 percent buy through mail order or from a health care provider.

Of course, it’s controversial whether we should be taking vitamins at all. Recent studies have indicated that taking a multivitamin won’t protect you from heart disease or cancer. And experts maintain that if you eat well, you don’t need vitamin supplements.

“The evidence shows that a healthy diet and exercise are the best way to ward off disease; a vitamin cannot replace those benefits,” says Eric Rimm, associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

(..)
PRICE MAY NOT MEAN QUALITY While the Food and Drug Administration regulates vitamins as part of the nutritional supplement industry, it does not test them before they are put on the shelves. The F.D.A. places the responsibility on the manufacturer to ensure that its dietary supplement products are safe before they are marketed. All of which means that no matter what the price, quality is not assured.

Orbis program on World Sight Day

Medical Director, Hunter Cherwek, in an Orbis from Chittagong..

Uganda: Out of the Wild

Uganda's "Impenetrable Forest," home to half the world's population of Mountain Gorillas, is also a hotbed for a number of deadly diseases that cross the species barrier from animals to humans. READ MORE

Bright Ideas for Treating the Winter Blues

It's that time of year when darkness descends like a heavy blanket beginning in mid-afternoon in much of the country. For some people, it also brings a desire to stay in bed and wait for spring.
(..)
Light therapy, using beams many times more intense than normal light, is the most common treatment. But a host of new therapies—from simulating dawn in your bedroom and changing your thoughts through cognitive-behavioral therapy to taking mega doses of vitamin D—are having success in some patients.

Bono on World AIDs Day