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POPSRunning Doc: More about runners & baby aspirin More: The important point is to get this word out. Bring this blog with you to your primary care practitioner so that he or she can look at the research, who did the research (Dr. Siegel is one of this country's valuable resources, who helped the understanding of hyponatremia and now coronary thrombosis in marathoners from his Harvard lab along with researchers nationally), and why we are all excited about creating an offensive against “sudden death” while running one of our races.
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POPSPETA's dirty secrets: 7 things you didn't know about PETA
More: regularly target children as young as six years old with anti-meat and anti-milk propaganda, often waiting outside their schools to intercept them as they walk to and from class-without notifying parents.… PETA…fund the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a deceptive animal rights group that promotes itself as an unbiased source of medical and nutritional information… PETA…billboards taunt Christians with the message that hogs "died for their sins."…And its infamous "Holocaust on Your Plate" campaign crassly compares the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide with farm animals. PETA has repeatedly attacked research foundations like the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, because they support animal-based research that might uncover cures for birth defects and life-threatening diseases…president Ingrid Newkirk has said that "even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we would be against it."
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POPSResearch: Stereotypes Loom Larger As Our Brains Age More: The second paper… contains a way around this problem.… "with explicit labeling, older adults were able to discount their stereotypes and avoid processing difficulties when subsequent stereotype-inconsistent information was encountered… when counter-stereotypical information is explicitly provided at encoding (that is, the first stage of the memory process, in which stimuli are initially registered), older adults are no more likely than younger adults to rely on stereotypes, and are similarly capable of altering their interpretation of a situation when information suggests that information is incorrect." In real life, of course, no one is pointing out biased statements as they emerge from the mouths or friends, family members or talk-show hosts. So for older adults, the best advice might be to avoid acquaintances who speak in stereotypes. This research suggests prejudice can be contagious, and we become more susceptible as our brains age.
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POPSHow the media skew gender research More: could it just be that studies that appear to support traditional roles for women tend to get picked for instant popularization? This phenomenon doesn't just apply to studies about daycare with the potential to guilt-trip working mothers. Rush Limbaugh, also last March, cheerfully reported the results of a Swedish study that seemed to show a correlation between poor health and a more gender-equal distribution of societal resources. That same study was picked up by the British Independent. The popularized message was that feminism makes you sick. Neither Rush Limbaugh nor the Independent paid any attention to an earlier study by the same researchers showing the reverse. They also ignored other studies finding a positive correlation between greater gender-equality and better overall health. It seems that a researcher can garner more press just by publishing a study with results that social conservatives wish to hear.
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POPSUS highway safety agency withheld distracted driver research More: The research findings were obtained by the Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen through Freedom of Information requests, the Times said. The newspaper posted the documents on its Web site Monday night. The findings included: _ Cell phone usage by drivers increased 50 percent, from 4 percent in 2000 to 6 percent in 2002. _ Driver distraction contributes to about 25 percent of all police-reported traffic crashes. _ Cell phone use is growing as a distraction while driving… Legislation forbidding the use of hand-held cell phones while driving was not recommended because it does not address the problem and may instead lead drivers to think handsfree phones are safer. The problem is that a cell phone conversation takes the driver's focus off the road, the studies showed.
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POPSResearcher: article is "a flat, unambiguous, factually incorrect misrepresentation" of my findings More: “When I saw the article my heart completely sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they’d got this study.” Since I started sniffing around, and Sophia complained, the Telegraph have quietly changed the online copy of the article, although there has been no formal correction, and in any case, it remains inaccurate. But there is a second, less obvious problem. Repeatedly, unpublished work – often of a highly speculative and eye-catching nature – is shepherded into newspapers by the press officers of the British Psychological Society, and other organisations. A rash of news coverage and popular speculation ensues, in a situation where nobody can read the academic work.
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POPS"I am awed by the scale of social change this stuff represents." More: Imagine a science fiction story written 50 years ago like Written 50 years ago, this would be radical left-wing speculation, right? As would a straight description of, say, an office party where I work. The research, management, and support staff a wild mix of different races and sexes? Female mathematicians and engineers and scientists doing lots of the research and work? Half the staff East or South Asian or Latin American, and a good fraction of the US-born staff black? C'mon--that crap will never happen, that's like something out of science fiction.
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POPSKids need reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic – and RECESS! “We should understand that kids need that break because the brain needs that break.” And many children are not getting that break. In the Pediatrics study, 30 percent were found to have little or no daily recess. Another report, from a children’s advocacy group, found that 40 percent of schools surveyed had cut back at least one daily recess period. Also, teachers often punish children by taking away recess privileges. That strikes Dr. Barros as illogical. “Recess should be part of the curriculum,” she said. “You don’t punish a kid by having them miss math class, so kids shouldn’t be punished by not getting recess.”
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POPSResearch: Sexual harassment from males prevents female bonding More: The research provides the first insight into the effect of male sexual harassment on female social networks and social recognition. The findings could have relevance to other species.… The researchers do not know exactly why sexual harassment from males has such a marked effect on female social interaction. However, it is possible that the sheer amount of time spent by females dealing with unwanted male attention prevents them from forming relationships with other females. They believe females from groups with more males may have bonded with females from outside in order to try to establish themselves in a more favourable environment.
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POPSNY mayor to New Yorkers: You are now all involuntary lab rats More: In the past year, researchers…have reported one of the most rigorous experiments so far: a randomized clinical trial of heart patients who were put on different diets. Those on a low-sodium diet were more likely to be rehospitalized and to die, results that prompted the researchers to ask, “Is sodium an old enemy or a new friend?” Those results…are a reminder that salt affects a great deal more than blood pressure. Lowering it can cause problems with blood flow to the kidneys and insulin resistance, which can increase the risk of strokes and heart attacks. Salt deprivation might also darken your mood, according to recent research…After analyzing the behavior and brain chemistry of salt-deprived rats, the psychologists found that salt, like chocolate and cocaine, affected reward circuitry in the brain, and that salt-deprived rats exhibited anhedonia, a symptom of depression characterized by the inability to enjoy normally pleasurable activities.
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POPSWhat's wrong with the war against drugs More: Dr Teresa Tate, who has prescribed heroin and morphine for 25 years, first as a cancer doctor and now as medical adviser to Marie Curie Cancer Care. We asked her to compare heroin with paracetamol, legally available without prescription. She told us: "I think that most doctors would tell you that paracetamol is actually quite a dangerous drug when used in overdose, it has a fixed upper limit for its total dose in 24 hours and if you exceed that, perhaps doubling it, you can certainly put yourself at great risk of liver failure and of death, whereas with diamorphine, should you double the dose that you normally were taking, I think the consequence would be to be sleepy for a while and quite possibly not much more than that and certainly no permanent damage as a result." Contrary to the loudly expressed view of so many politicians, this specialist of 25 years experience told us that when heroin is properly used by doctors, it is "a very safe drug".
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POPSUnderstanding Vitamin D - the not-really-a-vitamin vitamin More: There are 3 ways for adults to insure adequate levels of vitamin D: * regularly receive midday sun exposure in the late spring, summer, and early fall, exposing as much of the skin as possible. * regularly use a sun bed (avoiding sunburn) during the colder months. * take 5,000 IU per day for three months, then obtain a 25-hydroxyvitamin D test. Adjust your dosage so that blood levels are between 50–80 ng/mL (or 125–200 nM/L) year-round. Is it just me, or is saying " cholecalciferol is pronounced cho·le·cal·ci·fer·ol " rather less than helpful? Dictionary.com says it's pronounced koh- luh -kal-SIF- uh -rawl .
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POPSLow-protein diets useless for treating chronic renal failure The treatment of choice for an animal with chronic renal insufficiency, your vet will tell you, is to put them on a low-protein diet. The problem is, a low-protein diet DOES NOTHING to help with renal insufficiency. And apparently this has been known since at least 1999. We're getting ready to bring two new kitties home from the shelter, and we are going to be switching vets from our previous one to someone who stays more up to date with the research.
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POPS101 Fascinating Brain Blogs Way, wayyyy too much to clip – click through for the list of blogs. Although, one of us seems to be having trouble with numbers – it looks to me as though there are only 100 blogs listed.
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