Monday, February 19, 2007

Speedlinking 2/19/07

Quote of the day:

"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet."
~ Mevlana Rumi (1207 - 1273)

Image of the day:


BODY
~ Impact Sports Increase Bone Strength In Senior Athletes -- "Running, basketball and other high-impact sports may lead to stronger bones as people age . . . . Measurements conducted on senior Olympic athletes found that the bone mineral density (BMD) for those who participated in impact sports was significantly greater than athletes who competed in low-impact sports like swimming and cycling."
~ Protein's Power To Preserve Lean Body Mass During Weight Loss -- "Reducing daily caloric intake is typically the first approach that dieters take to shed those unwanted pounds. However, a new study released in the journal Obesity found that including protein from lean sources of pork in your diet could help you retain more lean body mass, which includes muscle, while losing weight." Fish, chicken, and turkey are better than pork.
~ 5 Superfoods for Weight Loss -- "Make these foods a part of your daily diet and watch the pounds come slipping off."
~ International study finds new autism genetic links -- "Scientists revealed the most extensive findings to date on the genetics of autism on Sunday, pinpointing two new genetic links that may predispose children to develop the complex brain disorder."
~ Feeding your brain: new benefits found in chocolate -- "As if people needed another excuse to like chocolate, new studies suggest a specially formulated type of cocoa may boost brain function and delay decline as people age, researchers said on Sunday."
~ There Is An Elephant In The Room -- "The treatment of rotator cuff disease has gone "arthroscopic." For years, the treatment of torn and ruptured rotator cuffs required "open surgeries" -- large incisions so the surgeon could visualize the area to be repaired. Then came the use of arthroscope -- revolutionizing rotator cuff surgeries."
~ Watercress: Anti-Cancer Superfood -- "Eating watercress daily can significantly reduce DNA damage to blood cells, which is considered to be an important trigger in the development of cancer, University of Ulster scientists revealed today (15 February)."
~ Sexually Obtuse? No Excuse -- "Despite the availability of accurate sexual heath information, educated people still don't know the basic facts of life. Commentary by Regina Lynn."


PSYCHE
~ Your Partner Has Been Unfaithful. The Question is Why. -- "Continuing the ongoing series on the psychology of relationships, this post takes a look at an event that can end everything: infidelity. A lot of the psychology research on relationships has focussed on the predictors of infidelity. But what tends to get lost is its affect on the relationship."
~ The Most Common Phobias -- "Phobias are irrational fears that may - or may not - have a basis in reality. Some phobias are more understandable than others (eg, snakes and spiders vs. coffee)."
~ Exploring the Secret -- "The physical Universe is the result of a quantum field. Our minds arise from the same field. Research and anecdotes suggest that the two are linked: mind affects reality." Damn, everyone is all about the secret these days.
~ Religious vs. Scientific Reasoning. -- Cool charts.
~ The light and dark of attraction in SciAmMind -- Two new articles from the mag are on-line.
~ "Understanding the Embodiment of Perception" -- Links to an pdf paper on the topic.
~ Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder -- "Struggling with anxiety is part of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). If you have OCD, you know your actions are irrational - and yet you feel powerless to stop."
~ An Excuse For Not Responding To A Nagging Spouse -- "New research findings now appearing online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology began with a professor's desire to understand why her husband often seemed to ignore her requests for help around the house."
~ The Ontology of Creature Consciousness -- "In a previous post, I asked whether creature consciousness might be ontologically more important, including as part of the ontological basis for phenomenal consciousness, than many philosophers seem to think. I was motivated in part by "Consciousness without a Cerebrain Cortex: A Challenge for Neuroscience and Medicine," a forthcoming BBS target article by Bjorn Merker."
~ Neurogenesis in the adult human brain -- "One of the central dogmas of neuroscience was that the brains of adult mammals cannot generate new nerve cells. But about 10 years ago, this changed, when it was discovered that in the hippocampi of adult rodents there are stem cells which are capable of generating new neurons."


CULTURE
~ Astrology study proves a point -- "Tongue firmly in cheek, a Canadian researcher said Virgos are more likely to vomit while pregnant, while Pisces have an increase risk of heart failure."
~ The Notion: Obama's Grassroots Following-- VIDEO -- "Obama's youthful grassroots following is showing that they can organize off-line as well."
~ In Defense of Dissents -- "Viewpoint: Chief Justice Roberts has issued a call for unamimity in Supreme Court decisions. Reynolds Holding explains why he should be overruled."
~ Why the Pelosi Democrats Scare China -- "Earlier this week, Pelosi and other Democratic House leaders called upon President Bush 'to present to Congress within 90 days a comprehensive plan to eliminate the surging trade deficits with these 'Big Three' economies [China, Japan, and the European Union] by tearing down market access barriers and eliminating unfair trading practices that have existed for years–in some cases, decades.'"
~ Hillary Clinton's "I'm Sorry" Problem Gets Worse -- "Even though voters on the campaign trail are making it clear that she needs to say these simple words in order to get their vote, Hillary has insisted that the mistakes were all George W. Bush's, and he should be the one to offer any apologies."
~ Mitt Romney: Too Good to Be True? -- Probably.
~ Fearless Leader -- "Foreign policy is truly foreign to Rudy Giuliani."
~ A Reality Check on Our Fears -- "Selling fear is the oldest tool of politics. Selling hope and confidence is the mother's milk of business."
~ American Belief in Pseudoscience on the Rise -- "People in the U.S. know more about basic science today than they did two decades ago, good news that researchers say is tempered by an unsettling growth in the belief in pseudoscience such as astrology and visits by extraterrestrial aliens."


HABITATS
~ 'Walkable' Communities May Make Elders Healthier -- "Some of a neighborhood's features -- the length of its blocks, how many grocery stores or restaurants are nearby -- may be more than selling points for real estate agents. A new study suggests such factors may work to beat back obesity in older people by increasing a neighborhood's 'walkability.'"
~ US Health System Problems Worsening, Warns Expert In BMJ -- "The problems of the US healthcare system are growing, warns an expert in this week's BMJ.The United States is the only major industrialised nation without universal health insurance, writes Karen Davis, President of the Commonwealth Fund. Coverage varies widely between states and has deteriorated in recent years."
~ Scientists Flex Political Muscles -- " Advocacy rules at the world's biggest general science conference as researchers polish their agendas on topics from climate change to creationists."
~ Freaky New Bats Found by DNA Barcoding -- "Bizarre-looking bats and other animals can be sorted by a new DNA method that promises further discoveries. But you'll want to see the freaky photos..."
~ Tiny Frog in Amber Might Be 25 Million Years Old -- "A Mexican miner has found a tiny tree frog that has been preserved in amber for 25 million years."
~ January is Warmest on Record -- "The average global temperature last month was the highest for any January on record, according to NOAA, climbing to 55.13 degrees F (12.85 degrees C), which is 1.53 degrees F (0.85 degrees C) warmer than the 20th century average."
~ Early US daylight savings time prompts Y2K-like confusion -- "Americans turn their clocks forward three weeks early this year, raising the specter of glitches for global business, travel and other functions in a scenario raising comparisons to the "Y2K" bug." For once, there's a benefit to living in AZ.
~ Feature Article: A Digital Life -- "New systems may allow people to record everything that has touched their lives and to store all these data in a personal digital archive."
~ U.N.: Hunger Kills 18,000 Kids Each Day -- "Some 18,000 children die every day because of hunger and malnutrition and 850 million people go to bed every night with empty stomachs, a "terrible indictment of the world in 2007," the head of the U.N. food agency said."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ From Joe Perez's Until: A brief outline of the 3 volumes of Kronology -- "Musings of a writer trying to get a handle on the major ideas of his forthcoming book, Kronology. . . ."
~ After the storm -- Great photos from Dave at Via Negativa.
~ The embodiment of freedom -- From Bob at Dust.
~ The Meek -- From Lin Jensen at Tricycle.
~ buddhism and conflict resolution -- From Sujatin at Lotus in the Mud.
~ From Mike at Unknowing Mind: Why Does Time Seem to Go Faster as We Age?
~ From Albert Klampt at Zaadz: The Spiral is Alive (1) and The Spiral is Alive (2).
~ Buddhist Geeks 7: The Shamatha Project -- "A battery of studies will be conducted in two 3-month meditation retreats (one retreat is a control group), and the results will be submitted to the most prestigious academic journals. In our final podcast with Alan Wallace he discusses this project, both in terms of its structure and his hypotheses."
~ From Tom at Thoughts Chase Thoughts: Buddhism and its Value-Added Boost.


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