Happiness: 10 Fascinating New Psychology Studies Everyone Should Know

From Psyblog..
Where we feel happiness in the body, how it affects our genetic code, why it changes with age, unexpected pleasures and much more…
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Kellogg Eye Center at U of Michigan is doing some cutting edge research in retinal disease
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Reuters | New KNFB smartphone app gives sight to the blind

National Federation of the Blind | Snap pictures, listen to printed text read aloud, store and share documents and more using the KNFB Reader iPhone app. The KNFB Reader app for iPhone is available in the Apple iTunes app store.

Does Your Toddler Need Glasses?

Toddlers wearing glasses look adorable, but the cuteness can cause problems. Many children who are still getting used to glasses find wearing them brings unwanted and unrelenting attention. Some people may even accuse parents of putting fake glasses on their children to be trendy.

Glasses have a serious function, though, and sometimes they are crucial to normal development of a child's vision and brain. Eyeglasses can fix more than near or farsightedness and may address common conditions such as amblyopia, or "lazy eye," and eye misalignment. Sometimes doctors require children to wear an eye patch to teach the brain to use vision stimulation from the weaker eye rather than ignore it.
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Moving fast to detect eyesight issues is crucial, doctors say, because correcting a child's vision early can help curb permanent damage.

"The brain is like cement hardening—you can't mold and shape it as easily the older children get," says Geoffrey Bradford, a professor of pediatric ophthalmology at West Virginia University School of Medicine and a member of the executive committee for ophthalmology for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The pediatrics group recommends that vision screening begin at age 3 during the annual check-up with a pediatrician. At every well-child appointment before age 3, including at birth, doctors typically look for irregularities in the eyes and ask whether parents have any vision concerns, Dr. Bradford says.

Patients who have a family history of eye problems, or who exhibit symptoms such as eyes crossing, drooping eyelids or infections, should seek earlier attention.

Meanwhile, the American Optometric Association recommends that all babies be examined by an optometrist or ophthalmologist between the ages of six and 12 months, and annually after that.

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Doccupy, EHRs and the Affordable Care Act

It’s rare for doctors to turn out en masse for a public protest. But that’s what happened at “Doccupy” in Contra Costa County California in 2012. A group of safety net physicians testified before county supervisors — in what they only half-jokingly called “Doccupy” — that the cumbersome move to electronic health records (EHRs) had taken an enormous toll on patient care. The doctors saw half their usual number of patients. As a result, they told supervisors, one in ten patients left the emergency room without being seen and wait times ballooned from one to four hours — with one person waiting 40 hours for a hospital bed.

This protest came on the heels of a letter from a group of county jail nurses asserting concerns about the same electronic records system. A subsequent NYT article pointed out additional productivity and patient safety issues raised about electronic medical records at other locations, even from health care establishments as impressive as the Mayo Clinic.

It might be tempting to think of these stories as an aberrant blip. But surveys show Doccupy may have just been the first sign of trouble with electronic health records nationwide:

- See more at: http://www.docgurley.com/2014/02/doccupy-ehrs-affordable-care-act/#sthash.s8rcDZ9K.dpuf
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Is Exercise Bad for Your Teeth?

Vigorous exercise is good for almost all of the body — except perhaps the teeth, according to a surprising new study of athletes. The study, published in The Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, found that heavy training may contribute to dental problems in unexpected ways.
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Compared with the control group, the athletes showed significantly greater erosion of their tooth enamel. They also tended to have more cavities, with the risk increasing as an athlete’s training time grew. Over all, the more hours that an athlete spent working out, the more likely he or she was to have cavities.

The researchers found no correlation, however, between consuming sports drinks or any other elements of the athletes’ diets and their oral health.

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The extent of the changes in the athletes’ saliva during a workout were something of a surprise, said Dr. Cornelia Frese, a senior dentist at University Hospital Heidelberg, who led the study.

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Training Dogs to Sniff Out Cancer

Since 2004, research has begun to accumulate suggesting that dogs may be able to smell the subtle chemical differences between healthy and cancerous tissue, including bladder cancer, melanomaand cancers of the lung, breast and prostate. But scientists debate whether the research will result in useful medical applications.

Dogs have already been trained to respond to diabetic emergencies, or alert passers-by if an owner is about to have a seizure. And on the cancer front, nonprofit organizations like the In Situ Foundation, based in California, and the Medical Detection Dogs charity in Britain are among a growing number of independent groups sponsoring research into the area.

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The next step will be to build a mechanical, hand-held sensor that can detect that cancer chemical in the clinic. That’s where Charlie Johnson a professor at Penn who specializes in experimental nanophysics, the study of molecular interactions between microscopic materials, comes in.

He is developing what he calls Cyborg sensors, which include biological and mechanical components – a combination of carbon nanotubes and single-stranded DNA that preferentially bond with one specific chemical compound. These precise sensors, in theory, could be programmed to bind to, and detect, the isolated compounds that Dr. Otto’s dogs are singling out.

“We are effectively building an electronic nose,” said Dr. Johnson, who added that a prototype for his ovarian cancer sensor will probably be ready

in the next five years.

Some experts remain skeptical.

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Learning How to Exert Self-Control

PARIS — NOT many Ivy League professors are associated with a type of candy. But Walter Mischel, a professor of psychology at Columbia, doesn’t mind being one of them.

“I’m the marshmallow man,” he says, with a modest shrug.

I’m with Mr. Mischel (pronounced me-SHELL) in his tiny home office in Paris, where he spends the summer with his girlfriend. We’re watching grainy video footage of preschoolers taking the “marshmallow test,” the legendary experiment on self-control that he invented nearly 50 years ago. In the video, a succession of 5-year-olds sit at a table with cookies on it (the kids could pick their own treats). If they resist eating anything for 15 minutes, they get two cookies; otherwise they just get one.

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Famously, preschoolers who waited longest for the marshmallow went on to have higher SAT scores than the ones who couldn’t wait. In later years they were thinner, earned more advanced degrees, used less cocaine, and coped better with stress. As these first marshmallow kids now enter their 50s, Mr. Mischel and colleagues are investigating whether the good delayers are richer, too.

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Part of what adults need to learn about self-control is in those videos of 5-year-olds. The children who succeed turn their backs on the cookie, push it away, pretend it’s something nonedible like a piece of wood, or invent a song. Instead of staring down the cookie, they transform it into something with less of a throbbing pull on them.

Adults can use similar methods of distraction and distancing, he says. Don’t eye the basket of bread; just take it off the table. In moments of emotional distress, imagine that you’re viewing yourself from outside, or consider what someone else would do in your place. When a waiter offers chocolate mousse, imagine that a cockroach has just crawled across it.

“If you change how you think about it, its impact on what you feel and do changes,” Mr. Mischel writes.

He explains that there are two warring parts of the brain: a hot part demanding immediate gratification (the limbic system), and a cool, goal-oriented part (the prefrontal cortex). The secret of self-control, he says, is to train the prefrontal cortex to kick in first.

To do this, use specific if-then plans, like “If it’s before noon, I won’t check email” or “If I feel angry, I will count backward from 10.” Done repeatedly, this buys a few seconds to at least consider your options. The point isn’t to be robotic and never eat chocolate mousse again. It’s to summon self-control when you want it, and be able to carry out long-term plans.

Japanese woman is first recipient of next-generation stem cells

Surgeons implanted retinal tissue created after reverting the patient's own cells to 'pluripotent' state.

A Japanese woman in her 70s is the world's first recipient of cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, a technology that has created great expectations since it could offer the same advantages as embryo-derived cells but without some of the controversial aspects and safety concerns.

In a two-hour procedure starting at 14:20 local time today, a team of three eye specialists lead by Yasuo Kurimoto of the Kobe City Medical Center General Hospital, transplanted a 1.3 by 3.0 millimetre sheet of retinal pigment epithelium cells into an eye of the Hyogo prefecture resident, who suffers from age-related macular degeneration.

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8 Facts that Explain What's Wrong with American Healthcare

Excellent article- worth the time to read in full .
Uvealblues
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Some highlights:

The reason that American health care is expensive is all about the price: when we go to the doctor, it costs more than when, say, someone in Canada goes to the doctor.

Part of this is about the price per unit of health care in the United States. From prescription drugs to imaging scans, nearly everything costs more when it's prescribed in America. Take the heartburn medication Nexium: the exact same medication costs $215 here and $23 in the Netherlands.

Most other countries have some form of price controls; the government negotiates with drug companies and device makers for lower prices, and the government has the power to win those negotiations. The United States doesn't do that. It leaves the negotiations up to individual insurers. And they tend to lose.

There are more nuanced ways that our health-care prices are more expensive, too. Harvard University's David Cutler points out that we have much higher administrative costs than most other countries — and those costs get tacked onto the bill when we go to the doctor. The average American doctor spends All those extra billing specialists' salaries have to get paid somehow — and that gets worked into our prices.

The National Institute for Health Care Management estimates that, in 2009, about half of health spending ($623 billion) went towards 5 percent of the population. On average, these are people who use $40,000 of health care annually.

As to who makes the most money, it's mostly drug companies and device manufacturers — the people who make the things that insurance companies buy. They typically run profit margins around 20 percent.

MONITOR GLAUCOMA WITH AN EYE IMPLANT AND A PHONE

Lowering a patient’s internal eye pressure is currently the only way to treat glaucoma. A tiny eye implant paired with a smart phone could help doctors measure and lower eye pressure.

For the 2.2 million Americans battling glaucoma, the main course of action for staving off blindness involves weekly visits to eye specialists who monitor—and control—increasing pressure within the eye.

Now, a tiny eye implant could enable patients to take more frequent readings from the comfort of home. Daily or hourly measurements of eye pressure could help doctors tailor more effective treatment plans.

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Burial Boys of Ebola

God Bless these courageous men and healthcare workers ...some of whom have contracted ebola and died: Link
Another link about these health workers: Link

Seeing-Eye Robot Assists Visually Impaired, No Clean-Up Required

Two familiar items not usually paired: a robot and a cane. At the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Cang Ye and his engineering lab team have prototyped a robotic walking stick for the blind. This robot-cane combines the basic physics of a walking stick and the technological efficiencies of a computer system.
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WE JUDGE TRUSTWORTHY FACES IN A SNAP

Our brains are able to judge the trustworthiness of a face even when we cannot consciously see it.

“The results are consistent with an extensive body of research suggesting that we form spontaneous judgments of other people that can be largely outside awareness,” explains Jonathan Freeman, an assistant professor in New York University’s psychology department.

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One study estimated that on average, prior authorization requests consumed about 20 hours a week per medical practice

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I’m all for controlling medical costs and trying to apply rational rules to our use of expensive medications and procedures. But in the current system, everything seems to be in service of the corporate side of medicine, not the patient. The clinical rationale and the actual patient — not to mention the doctors and nurses involved in the care — are at best secondary concerns.

In the end, we were able to keep Mr. V.’s blood pressure under control. My blood pressure, however, was a different story.

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Wireless Eye Implant Continuously Measures Intraocular Pressure (VIDEO)

Measuring a person’s intraocular pressure (IOP) can help diagnose and monitor glaucoma, but just like blood pressure it varies and can be subject to the “white coat effect.” Continuous monitoring of IOP to detect spikes is practically impossible when using a traditional tonometer, but a new eye implant from Germany’s Implandata Ophthalmic Products that makes this possible has been implanted in a first patient as part of a European clinical trial.
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Three Myths About the Brain

Good article not only about the brain but also about how scientific misinformation abounds in pop culture..

Uveal Blues

IN the early 19th century, a French neurophysiologist named Pierre Flourens conducted a series of innovative experiments. He successively removed larger and larger portions of brain tissue from a range of animals, including pigeons, chickens and frogs, and observed how their behavior was affected.

His findings were clear and reasonably consistent. “One can remove,” he wrote in 1824, “from the front, or the back, or the top or the side, a certain portion of the cerebral lobes, without destroying their function.” For mental faculties to work properly, it seemed, just a “small part of the lobe” sufficed.

Thus the foundation was laid for a popular myth: that we use only a small portion — 10 percent is the figure most often cited — of our brain. 

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Sitting around an outdoor table at the Red Crab, a restaurant on the tropical island of Grenada festooned with palm trees and fiery bougainvillea, a dozen aspiring doctors bashfully conceded that they had been, at best, near misses when it came to getting into medical school in the United States.
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There are more than 70 medical schools across the Caribbean, about half of them catering to Americans. A handful — including St. George’s, Saba University, Ross University in Dominica and American University of the Caribbean in St. Maarten, all of which are for-profit — have qualified for federal financial aid programs by demonstrating that their standards are comparable to those in the United States. And they report that high numbers of their test-takers — 95 percent or more — pass the United States Medical Licensing Exam Step 1, a basic science test.

But quality is all over the map in the Caribbean.

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Three Questions for J. Craig Venter

Gene research and Silicon Valley-style computing are starting to merge.

Genome scientist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter is best known for being the first person to sequence his own genome, back in 2001.

This year, he started a new company, Human Longevity, which intends to sequence one million human genomes by 2020, and ultimately offer Web-based programs to help people store and understand their genetic data (see “Microbes and Metabolites Fuel an Ambitious Aging Project”).

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But that’s going to require some massive data crunching. To get these skills, Venter recruited Franz Och, the machine-learning specialist leading Google Translate. Now Och will apply similar methods to studying genomes in a data science and software shop that Venter is establishing in Mountain View, California.

The hire comes just as Google itself has launched a similar-sounding effort to start collecting biomedical data (see “What’s a Moon Shot Worth These Days”). Venter calls Google’s plans for a biomedical database “a baby step, a much smaller version of what we are doing.”

What’s clear is that genome research and data science are coming together in new ways, and at a much larger scale than ever before. We asked Venter why.

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Prototype Display Lets You Say Goodbye to Reading Glasses

Researchers are developing technology that can adjust an image on a display so you can see it clearly without corrective lenses.
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In addition to making it easier for people with simple vision problems to use all kinds of displays without glasses, the technique may help those with more serious vision problems caused by physical defects that can’t be corrected with glasses or contacts, researchers say. This includes spherical aberration, which causes different parts of the lens to refract light differently.
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