Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Speedlinking 1/17/07

Quote of the day:

"Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity."
~ Albert Camus

Image of the day:

BODY
~ 6 Nutrients That Boost Weight Loss -- Five out of six ain't bad. No iron for men or post-menopausal women unless you enjoy heart disease.
~ Starbucks plans switch to growth-hormone-free milk -- "Starbucks Corp. on Tuesday said it is aiming to make the milk and other dairy products it serves in its U.S. coffee houses free of a controversial artificial growth hormone used in dairies to increase milk production."
~ Couples training can promote skin cancer exams -- "Two are better than one when it comes to performing a skin exam for melanoma and spotting it at the earliest, most treatable stage, a new study shows."
~ Wall Street Journal Examines Studies, Recommendations On Hormone Replacement Therapy -- "The Wall Street Journal on Thursday examined findings from the Women's Health Initiative and other studies on the risks and benefits of hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women, as well as how to weigh symptoms and factors before deciding to start treatment."
~ Age-related impotence may improve over time -- This is not very promising: One third get better, one third get worse, and I would assume that one third stay about the same. Not good odds.
~ More fast food meals mean more excess weight -- Next thing you know they'll be claiming that lack of exercise makes you overweight.
~ Can't Prove It, Part 2 -- From T-Nation -- "8 coaches explain what they believe to be true, but can't prove."


PSYCHE
~ Medical Mystery: Compulsive Hoarders -- "A Psychological Compulsion to Keep Everything, Even When It Ruins Your Life." This is fascinating.
~ Mental Illness Often Translates into Drastically Shorter Life Expectancy.
~ Is the Autism Epidemic Overstated? -- Some think that it is.
~ Stanford Prison experiment posted on YouTube -- This was a landmark study nearly all psych students have seen at one point or another -- now the disturbing video is available on YouTube.
~ Archive footage of shell shock patients -- In WWI, some soldiers were executed for cowardice as a result of suffering from shell shock.
~ Memories are made of this molecule -- "European scientists have isolated a receptor molecule called TrkB that initiates a signalling pathway for long-term potentiation (LTP) in the brain of a living mouse...."
~ Why I love psychology -- In relation to climate and the environment.


CULTURE
~ Mystery of Napoleon's death said solved -- Seems it arsenic wasn't poisoned after all.
~ The Delicate Sensibilities of Teenage Girls -- "Let women tell their own life tales about what it's like to grow up nerd, to be in the lab. And have them tell their stories about what led some of them to turn away from careers in science - that's important to know, too."
~ The Cultural Self (East vs. West) -- "What is the neural correlate of the self? The easy answer is that nobody knows."
~ Discovering the Real Heroes -- "The qualities of a hero? Apparently being helpful, caring, always there when needed and willing to sacrifice one's own comfort for another. Some were living examples of striving for goals or persistently pushing the writer to do his or her best."
~ OneWorld.net announces its eight finalists for people of the year 2006 -- Go vote.
~ Obama Takes First White House Step -- "Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Tuesday he is taking the initial step in a presidential bid that could make him the nation's first black to occupy the White House." Run, Barack, Run!
~ Would George Carlin Have Been Too Much To Hope For? -- "Wonkette reports that, following Stephen Colbert's rather well-noticed appearance at last year's event, the White House Correspondents Association has invited Rich Little to headline for this year's dinner." WOW, how 1975 of them.
~ Diary of a Guantánamo Attorney -- "I had assumed that I was well-informed about our criminal president and his assault on the rule of law; it never occurred to me that four years after being captured (and more than one year after the Supreme Court affirmed their right to hearing and counsel) individuals were still being held without legal representation. I replied to the e-mail, offering my services. During a conference call for volunteer lawyers, I got a sense of what the job might entail. For example, attorneys are required to turn their client notes over to the government after visiting prisoners. I naively asked, "What about attorney-client privilege?" This, like so many other protections and legal principles, doesn't apply to Guantánamo."
~ Obama joins McCain, Lieberman to push Senate climate bill -- Politics makes strange . . . well, you know the rest.


HABITATS
~ Can HP fool Moore's Law? -- "Researchers from HP Labs plan to publish a paper this month that outlines how it may become possible to substantially increase the performance of certain types of chips, and reduce their power consumption, by replacing the communication wires inside chips with a crossbar grid of nanowires."
~ Scientists Warn of Diminished Earth Studies From Space -- "The nation's ability to track retreating polar ice and shifting patterns of drought, rainfall and other environmental changes is being put "at great risk" by faltering efforts to replace aging satellite-borne sensors, the National Research Council of the National Academies warned."
~ Eat What You Want, Pay What You Can -- "A couple in Denver, Colorado, wrote risk into their business plan by opening a restaurant where patrons pay by donation according to their means, not set pricing."
~ Ancient Urban Battle Revealed -- "The discovery was made in the ruins of Hamoukar, an ancient settlement in northeastern Syria located just miles from the border with Iraq."
~ Neandertals, Modern Humans May Have Interbred, Skull Study Suggests -- "The new skull find also shows that humans continued to evolve after reaching Europe some 40,000 years ago." If true, this would override the prevailing opinion.
~ Top Ten Unexplained Phenomena -- Just for fun.
~ Scientists Try to Save Rarest Creatures in the World -- "Scientists launched a bid on Tuesday to save some of the world's rarest and most neglected creatures from extinction."


INTEGRAL
~ From Mystery of Existence: Form, emptiness and unraveling knots, and Big Mind and indwelling God.
~ A Free Mind and Innovative Spiral Master Wizard -- Albert Klamt at Zaadz introduces Mike Jay, a true Spiral Wizard and frequent presenter at Don Beck's SDi trainings.


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