Eat Americans much salt?

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According to a survey of U.S. Government researchers food 9 out of 10 Americans most get estimated processed food too much Salz.Die more than twice the recommended amount.An and 77 percent of dietary sodium comes from restaurant foods.Reuters reports:

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5 Simple ways to a better listener be

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1. Disable some SpaceRemoving all that talk to the hand. 2 related is not fixed. Control your LimbsAvoid behaviors that distract others and cause that you think you are not listening. 3. Ask QuestionsThe of best listener a regular practice questions thoughtful questions. 4 make.Make a MoveWhen you know you for a long time, put in a few minutes of exercise before the time. 5 sitzen.erzwingen a

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Botox may affect your ability to feel emotions

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Botox injections can your ability to feel emotions dampen. for at least some emotions if you facial expressions, take a part reported some of the emotional experience, a new study, participants, the Botox injections were less emotional response to some emotional video clips.WebMD reports according to researchers.In:

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Whooping cough of kills 5 in Kalifornien--State declared an epidemic

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  After the death of five babies health authorities have also known an epidemic of whooping cough, California as pertussis declared. The announcement came after the authorities a sharp spike in reports of pertussis, noticed that often mistaken for a cold or flu and is very strong of contagious.A CDC study suggests that the resurgence of whooping cough due to the vaccine cause increased and more virulent toxin modified.system CDC acknowledges that whooping cough highly vaccinated Ländern--recurrent is and that it is not only because some children are not vaccinated, although this can be a factor.According CDC: "the basic concept of pertussis has been attributed to improved diagnosis, reduced to various factors including awareness, vaccination coverage, suboptimal vaccines, dwindling vaccine-induced immunity and pathogens adaptation...""Pathogens adjustment is supported by several observations."In other words, caused the vaccination against whooping cough to develop pathogens pathogens with a more virulent strain.
Sources:


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San Francisco is ground zero in gadget radiation battle

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Cell phone manufacturers could soon the city of San Francisco their products radiation emissions amid a growing concern about cell phone hazard-disclose a concern that is soon to other wireless products.Last downloads might require, the City Board of Supervisors voted mobile phone retailer, how much radiation show their phones to demand emittieren.Als response has cancelled the wireless industry's trade association, the CTIA, its annual SF-based trade show.greenbiz reports:

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Bacteria in reusable grocery bags, but grow Don ' T fret

Categories: Infectious disease, fitness & nutrition, your health 12: 58 pm 25 June 2010 e-Mail share print comments () what is Facebook stumble upon reddit Twitter Digg? Parts of Whitney Blair Wyckoff

Bacteria can in this reusable shopping bags hanging out, terribly popular lately geworden.Aber don't panic.

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Building living, breathing Lung in the lab

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Laura Niklason developed working lungs in the laboratory of stripping the cells from rat lung and Primátor of the remaining structure with fresh Zellen.Don Ingber creates a "lungs on a chip" that mimics the chemistry and mechanics of the lungs work and could be used for drug testing.

Copyright © 2010 national public radio ®.For only personal, non commercial Gebrauch.finden see "Terms and conditions". for other uses, permission required.

IRA FLATOW, host:

Are from NPR SCIENCE Friday, listen. I am Ira Flatow.

Organ transplant patients spend months if not years, waiting for the right organ of the correct Spender.Laut US organ procurement and transplantation network, over 108,000 people waiting right now organs: heart, lungs, kidneys, liver.All patients alle-and all of you, 14,000, waited more than five years.

But what if instead of waiting for someone to free another body, could you a "new" in the lab, with your own patient cells? This is of course impossible now has but my next guest work a significant step towards him by the construction of lung, building work lungs in a Labor.Und how you did it is quite a story, and the research appears this week in the journal Science.

Laura Niklason is Professor of anesthesia and biomedical engineering from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.Sie connects us by Telefon.Willkommen on SCIENCE Friday, Dr. Niklason.

Dr. LAURA NIKLASON (Professor, Anesthesiology & biomedical technology, Yale University): it is great here to sein.Vielen thanks.

FLATOW: We have a little video of - build the Lunge.Sie actually built, the lungs in the Labor.Geben you us the steps of what you have done.

Dr. NIKLASON: Well, we started taking of lung of adult rats and take out carefully wash away the cells that were in the lungs, so what was left behind the framework or the skeleton of lung, consisting as collagen and elastin proteins, extracellular matrix was really.

We then deferred cells in the framework back in the skeleton and cultivated the lungs in a bioreactor that really mimics some environment of the foetus as the fetus grows.After a week we put culture, some of these lungs again in different rats and we saw that you acted at least for a few hours.

FLATOW: So you basically washed all the cells and the structure left the lungs, and put your sort of rebuilt the uterus, in effect, again where originated the lungs.

Dr. NIKLASON: Yes, we haben.Wir worked several years bioreactor to create some of the aspects of uterus, including perfusion mimic nutrient medium by the lungs würde.Und we also equipped, so that might coax lungs breathing bioreactors you inhale and exhale medium much nutrient as do the fetal lung during development.

FLATOW: how the cells have now, and there are many different types of cells in one lung, right?

Dr. NIKLASON: Correct.

FLATOW: How did you wherever you go and what to do?

Dr. NIKLASON: Well, that's one of the surprising and remarkable results of some of this work is that we do not expect to find, but we found when we took cells from a healthy lung that the skeleton that left behind actually alot of zip codes in it hatte.Es was actually a lot of information about what types of cells where you want to land.

And we only discovered this setting mixes of different types of cells in the matrix and saw then about a week Später.Was we found that most of the cells to their correct spots went as had little homing signals.

FLATOW: Wow. is our 1-800-989-8255 Nummer.Wir talk about creating a Labor.Sie lungs can also tweet

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'Lucy' Predecessor Turns Back The Clock On Walking

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Anthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie talks about a recently unearthed Australopithecus afarensis skeleton nicknamed "Kadanuumuu." He says the individual predates "Lucy" by about 400,000 years, and that the bones suggest upright walking originated earlier than previously thought.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, host:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow. Last year, we met the hominid Ardi, who lived in Africa 4.4 million years ago. Even more famous than Ardi, of course, is the star of the bunch, Lucy, a three-and-a-half-foot-tall female, who lived more recently in our evolutionary past, 3.2 million years ago.

Well, this week, scientists added another individual to the family tree, Kadanuumuu, a five-foot-tall male, whom the scientists say is in Lucy's species. But he walked the earth 400,000 years before her, and walking is the right word because it appears that he stood and walked upright like Lucy, which is significant, and which we'll talk about a little bit later.

Details about the Kadanuumuu appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. What can we learn from this new hominid skeleton? What is so significant about walking, Big Man, his name in English, Big Man.

Joining us to talk about that is a guest, a member of the team that discovered Kadanuumuu. Yohannes Haile-Selassie is the curator and head of the physical anthropology department at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, and he joins us on the phone from Ethiopia today. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

Mr. YOHANNES HAILE-SELASSIE (Curator, Physical Anthropology Department, Cleveland Museum of Natural History): Oh, thank you.

FLATOW: You're welcome. Where did you find this fossil?

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: This fossil was found in the Afar region of Ethiopia, like Lucy and Ardi. As you know, the Afar area is very rich in fossils of ancient human ancestors. So we kept looking for them in that area, and this is from a new study area called Woranso-Mille, which we've been working on for the last six years.

FLATOW: And he is how much of the skeleton did you actually uncover?

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: We have as much as Lucy's, but what the difference is, in Kadanuumuu, we have specimens that were unknown from Lucy previously. Some of the elements that we have for Kadanuumuu are also more complete than were for Lucy.

For example, we have a complete shoulder blade, which was unknown for Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, and we also have more rib bones, which will enable us to reconstruct the ribcage of the species of Lucy.

So in terms of the (unintelligible), the amount of specimens recovered, they would be about the same, but we have more information from this new individual. Kadanuumuu is also 400,000 years older than Lucy.

FLATOW: And you feel that this is the same species as Lucy?

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: This is the same species as Lucy because what we did was since Lucy is also as complete as Kadanuumuu, we compared those two specimens, and what we found out is that their difference is merely a size difference and also a sex difference.

Otherwise, in terms of their detailed shapes of their bones, they're the same. And what we can learn from this is that Kadanuumuu actually shows us that advanced, upright walking, humanlike walking, has actually evolved long before most of the anthropologists thought.

FLATOW: Much older, it looks like.

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: Yes, older than Lucy.

FLATOW: Older than Lucy.

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: Yes.

FLATOW: But you're missing the skull. Couldn't you learn a lot more if you had the teeth and the skull and things like that?

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: If we had the teeth and the cranium, of course, people wouldn't have doubted our assignment of Kadanuumuu to Australopithecus afarensis, which is Lucy's species, because most traditionally, most of the classification is based on teeth and the cranium.

However, we did not find the head or the teeth of Kadanuumuu, but what we had from below the neck was enough to put it into Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis.

FLATOW: And how does this change the picture of what you think about hominids now?

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: Well, many anthropologists in the past thought that Lucy was not fully adapted to upright walking, and this was because of her small legs and also the overall size of Lucy being small indicated to those anthropologists that Lucy probably didn't, was not fully adapted to upright walking.

But in Kadanuumuu, what we're seeing, even being 400,000 years older than Lucy, is that its legs and body proportions show very humanlike proportions, and Kadanuumuu was actually able to walk very close to the way modern humans walk.

So this is the skeletal evidence for what we previously had as footprints from Laetoli in Tanzania, which are also dated to about 3.6 million years ago. So the humanlike advanced upright walking is not something that came later in our evolution, as people thought previously.

Now we have with Kadanuumuu, we have good evidence that very advanced upright walking actually evolved as early as 3.6 million years ago, if not earlier. So that's a big breakthrough for (unintelligible) anthropology.

FLATOW: Now, we keep hearing so much about how close humans are to chimps. Does this tell us anything about, this skeleton, about how much different we are than chimps?

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: Humans and chimpanzees are closely related, genetically speaking. However, what we've learned not only from Kadanuumuu but also from Ardi, is that chimpanzees have evolved so much since the split from the common ancestor they shared with us.

So this is reflected in their boney anatomy. And of course, when we look at Kadanuumuu's shoulder blade, or what we call the scapula, it has so many features that are shared with gorillas than to the exclusion of chimpanzees.

So what that tells us is that some of our body parts, like the shoulder area, are very primitive. They did not evolve that much because some of them are even shared with gorillas.

So chimpanzees, since the split, have evolved so much in a very different way, but genetically, as we know, they are very closer to us than the gorillas are. So that's what we learned from Ardi, that chimpanzees have evolved so much, and that they cannot be used as the models to reconstruct, you know, the common ancestor they shared with us.

FLATOW: When Lucy was discovered, it was thought that because of her skeleton, she spent a lot of time in trees. But now this would seem to say that she didn't. I mean, this is an older one who walked upright and did not...

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: The reason why yeah, the reason why people thought Lucy would spend a lot of time on trees is because of her small size, and also, her small body frame is actually what made her arms longer, like apes.

And people would assume that since you also had her fingers, they would assume that she was probably spending more time in trees than on the ground. But what we're learning from Kadanuumuu, which is even 400,000 years older than she is, is that afarensis, her species, was in fact adapted to a fully advanced by upright walking as early as 3.6 million years ago.

So those previous interpretations of Australopithecus afarensis, based on Lucy, were probably misinterpretations based on her small size and also her shorter legs. But that was not proportionally short. It's just they were absolutely short.

FLATOW: Was it possible and people always want to know this, and we have a couple tweets coming in asking this was it possible to extract any DNA from these samples?

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: These bones are too old to extract DNA from them. I think we've been able, in paleo-anthropological studies, we've been able to extract DNA from ancient fossils only as old as about 30,000 years.

Anything beyond that is less likely to yield any DNA evidence because all the organic material of these bones have already been entirely replaced by minerals.

So the chances of getting DNA from specimens like Kadanuumuu or Lucy, which are older than 3 million years, is very rare.

FLATOW: There was a discovery of some footprints, what, about 30 years ago that no one could really identify because they were so big. Does this seem to fit in now that you've discovered this specimen?

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: I'm sure you're talking about the Laetoli footprints that I mentioned earlier.

FLATOW: Yes.

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: These are 3.6-million-year-old footprints from Laetoli in Tanzania, and of course, those footprints clearly showed a humanlike foot with the big toe connected to the other toes, unlike Ardi. So that indicated perfect bipedalism as early as 3.6 million years ago. But we did not have the sort of partial skeleton evidence for it until the discovery of Kadanuumuu.

So Kadanuumuu sort of complements those footprints that were found in 1979, which is 30-some years ago.

FLATOW: There have been some skeptics, some scientists or other paleontologists, who are saying, you know what, until you get the cranium, until you get the teeth, we are not going to be able to be sure how close this is to Lucy. Is that something you'll be looking for now?

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: This is well, I don't think we're going to be find the head or teeth of Kadanuumuu, but the one thing that we have to know is the use of head and teeth traditionally to put specimens into a present taxon is like traditional, but postcranial elements can also give us a lot of information and indicate taxonomic, you know, affinity.

For example, if you look at Ardi's foot, okay, by itself, nobody would have put that into Australopithecus afarensis because afarensis doesn't have a foot like that.

So that foot by itself, because of the morphology it has, could be diagnostic without the head. So it's not necessarily that we can't put postcranial elements to a taxon because if we have good comparative material, like Lucy, we can actually compare them to existing postcranial elements and determine their taxonomy. So that's exactly what we did.

Some of the critics we thought said, well, there is a species Kenyanthropus platyops born about 3.5 million years ago, and those skeptics or critics said why didn't you guys consider putting him into Kenyanthropus platyops.

But of course, Kenyanthropus platyops is known only from a head, a crushed head, and there is no way that we can compare postcranial elements with a head. It's totally inappropriate. So the only appropriate comparative material we had was Lucy and her species' remains that we have from sites such as Hadar, which is one of the best sites for Australopithecus afarensis, including Lucy.

So what we did was we used the available comparative material. We looked at the shape and form of these bones. We compared it with Lucy particularly, and Kadanuumuu was very much like Lucy except for the size and sex.

FLATOW: Well, thank you very much for staying up late and taking time to be with us today.

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: You're welcome. Thanks for having me here.

FLATOW: Good luck to you. You're welcome.

Mr. HAILE-SELASSIE: Thank you.

FLATOW: Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, talking with us from Ethiopia about this new discovery of Kadanuumuu. He is curator and head of physical anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio.

We're going to take a break, afterwards come back and talk about building lungs, actual lungs, in a beaker in the laboratory. They're doing it for rats, at least. We'll talk about the matrix. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

(Soundbite of music)

FLATOW: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

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NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

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The next 'Geek'? We asked. You answered.

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Vote on the next word for Geek.

Text size A A A June 25, 2010

What a turn of events appears unlikely suddenly chic has "Geek". Last week, asked Friday, when a new Word for Geek without a hip connotation and asked listeners it should weigh science. After combing through the submissions we show the top terms.

Copyright © 2010 national public radio ®. for only personal, non-commercial use. See "Terms and conditions".For other uses, permission required.

IRA FLATOW, host:

Are from NPR SCIENCE Friday hear. I am Ira Flatow. We are back with flora Lichtman.Hallo, flora.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hi, IRA.

FLATOW: we are back, because we a survey last week was right? update us.

LICHTMAN: Thats richtig.Letzte week we had a discussion and thought it came up that is perhaps the word geek, I don't know co-opted, that it has become a little hip, for those of us geeks who suffered much social fear and feel true, as we really deserved the term.

FLATOW: Geek is to send.

LICHTMAN: Is to send. So we asked listeners to weigh in on a new Word for Geek.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

LICHTMAN: And we have some really clever answers, I thought.

FLATOW: Let's go, by you.

LICHTMAN: Okay.So the first...

FLATOW: Here is our top 5.

LICHTMAN: All right. The top five.And this one, you know, I would like to begin by saying that many people in this kind of were disgusted and said, you know, we at the word geek sollte.Let keep's keep Geek.Dies is our word.We should fight.I want to go down without a fight.

FLATOW: Right.Rechts.Keep geek.

LICHTMAN: Keep geek.

FLATOW: This was number one response.

LICHTMAN: reaction number eins.Und then rebrand - know people, the kind of a moving train...

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

LICHTMAN:...jumpers on than perhaps Geekgoppers or Geeksters, you know that we should consider the real geek Word.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

LICHTMAN: All right. Number zwei.Wie about Snerd?

FLATOW: A Snerd.

LICHTMAN: A Snerd, and that is for sexy nerd and slowly (unintelligible). While I saw "Morning Joe" Peter Orszag, if you don't know he is the White House Budget Director. Little news trivia, he just resigned or he said resignation this week was.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

LICHTMAN: How the listener writes the ultimate biz geek and came with the name Snerd sexy nerd, because Peter Orszag...

FLATOW: Well, let's try raus.Das is very Snerdy.I am a Snerd.Wie sound to you?

LICHTMAN: I like the way of es.Es is a little, though it sounds somewhat nasal I know nicht.Aber that's kind of true geek, right?

FLATOW: Number three.

LICTHMAN: Okay.Number three, we actually have a hint for number three.

(Soundbite of the TV series, "the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show")

Unidentified man (actor): (as Mr. Peabody) is my name, Sir, Peabody.And that's my boy Sherman by the Wayback Machine.

Unidentified person (actor): (Peabody) the Wayback as all heated, Mr. Peabody.

FLATOW: Oh, a Peabody.Er is-is a Peabody.

LICHTMAN: Yes."Rocky and Bullwinkle," if it rings a Bell was not.

(Soundbite laugh)

LICHTMAN: And those who suggested this also mentioned that you know, the good thing with Peabody is that, if taken apart, it could not Jock body to describe the most geeks.

FLATOW: A pea body.

LICHTMAN: A PEA-BOD.

FLATOW: Ooh.

LICHTMAN: It's a little ambiguity.Pretty good.

FLATOW: Double, wow.It so far is my favorite, I think.

LICHTMAN: Pretty good.The next was a bengee(ph) Bengeek the adjective with a k.And this origin this Bill Marsden(ph) writes, is interested in a scientific approach to life after Benjamin Franklin, a layman.So one could say, the balloon camera thing, is the pretty Bengeek.

FLATOW: I like know dass.Aber and it is also because Benjamin Franklin was an eclectic guy, interested in all sorts of things.

LICHTMAN: Yes.And.

FLATOW: He was - yeah.

LICHTMAN: And it's nice - it's kind of a lovable term.

FLATOW: It is a lovable and actually reflects that geeks today multi dimensions you may have, as Franklin had.

LICHTMAN: Right.Und maybe is this the development that we for a new Word for geek, ready, because you know, maligned need not more geeks quarantined.we something a little...

FLATOW: A Bengee.Das is very Bengeek.

LICHTMAN: I like es.Ich like the kind of Bengee.

FLATOW: That's good.

LICHTMAN: so that's seems quite gut.Aber I think you know, we - the last one on our list, speaking of adorable terms, and I think this is adorable proposed, it's Flatow.

(Soundbite laugh)

FLATOW: This is so - now, I am now of the running.

LICHTMAN: No Way.Es is the ultimate compliment, and several people suggested, IRA.

FLATOW: All right.

LICHTMAN: So we are definitely leave it...

FLATOW: All Recht.Wir be five in verlassen.Die five through schnell.Wir must again on our website at wählen.Es is sciencefriday.com.Sie are…

LICHTMAN: Okay.Nummer one, two, Snerd Geek.Nummer deem three Peabody, sexy Nerd.Nummer, as a reference to "Rocky and Bullwinkle" s nerdy Guy.Nummer three, Bengee, homage to Benjamin Franklin.Und that was four, I think.

FLATOW: Yes.

LICHTMAN: And number five Flatow.Und we all know who the on is.

FLATOW: Ja.Alles klar.Flora Lichtman, our digital Editor, I thank you want to reconcile Ihnen.Wenn, go to our website at sciencefriday.com.Stimmen for which these five - Yes, I think, four are a good choice - want for voices and we tally the results and see, what with the next week let's can. see also flora's video podcast is about all the time we can use today on the website surfing, pick of the week can ist.Und there on the left and contact - our iPhone app in the bag, take it with uns.Und you saw a great Wochenende.Wir next week.

I am Ira Flatow in New York.

Copyright © 2010 national public radio ® .all rights vorbehalten.Keine can quotes from the materials contained herein in any any medium without attribution, national public radio used werden.Dieses Protocol is for personal, noncommercial use only, in accordance with our terms and conditions bereitgestellt.Jede other use required of the prior consent of NPR.Besuchen our site with permissions for more Informationen.NPR transcripts are created on a rush period by a contractor for NPR and accuracy and availability may variieren.Dieser text in its final form and can be updated or revised in the Zukunft.Bitte consider that the authoritative record of NPR programming of audio ist.Im connection with NPR stories geek your father's Day June 18, 2010 e-Mail share comments print Facebook stumble upon reddit Twitter Digg what is this? share from our listeners letters: Jim Thorpe; the new iPhoneLetters: ' the killer inside me '; Basil blight podcast

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Should Joints Be In The Medicine Cabinet?

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Nathan Seppa, reporter, Science News, Washington, DC

Herbert Kleber, professor of psychiatry, director, Division of Substance Abuse, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.

Igor Grant, director, Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, University of California, San Diego, San Diego Calif.

Mitch Earleywine, professor of psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, N.Y.

text size A A A June 25, 2010

Fourteen states now allow marijuana smoking for medical purposes, and more states are deciding whether or not to do the same. Ira Flatow and guests look at the research on inhaled marijuana as a medication and discuss whether or not doctors should be prescribing pot smoking.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, host:

You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow.

Up next, as I say, medical marijuana. Fourteen states have sanctioned the use of medical marijuana for conditions ranging from multiple sclerosis, anorexia and arthritis, to migraines, hepatitis C and Alzheimer's.

In states where medical marijuana is legal, all that stands between you and smoking pot is a doctor's prescription and a visit to a medical marijuana dispensary. As scientists search for more medicinal uses for the plant, some doctors are asking if smoking marijuana is really the best way to treat some of these illnesses. Is a marijuana pill, a pill form, a better alternative? And what does the research have to say about the medicinal uses for cannabis?

That's the subject of this week's cover story in Science News. The author in that, Nathan Seppa, is here to talk about it. He is the biomedical reporter for Science News, and joins us from our NPR studios in Washington. Welcome back to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Nathan.

Mr. NATHAN SEPPA (Biomedical Reporter, Science News): Hello, Ira, nice to be back.

FLATOW: You're welcome. Also with us is Dr. Herbert Kleber. He is professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and director on substance abuse there. He joins us here in our New York studio. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

Dr. HERBERT KLEBER (Professor of Psychiatry; Director, Division of Substance Abuse, Columbia University): A pleasure.

FLATOW: Igor Grant is a distinguished professor and executive vice president of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. He's also the director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UCSD. Thank you, Dr. Grant, for joining us.

Dr. IGOR GRANT (Director, Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, University of California, San Diego): Yes, pleasure to be with you.

FLATOW: Thank you. Mitch Earleywine is professor of psychology at the State University of New York University at Albany. He is also on the advisory board of NORML, that's the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He is the author of the book "Substance Abuse Treatment: The Parents' Guides to Marijuana and Understanding Marijuana." Thank you for being with us today.

Mr. MITCH EARLEYWINE (Professor, Psychology University at Albany - State University of New York): Thank you, Ira.

FLATOW: Dr. Grant, there's a marijuana pill available. There's a synthetic form of THC, but you study the effects of inhaled marijuana, the whole plant, is that correct?

Dr. GRANT: Yes, that's true.

FLATOW: And why is that?

Dr. GRANT: Well, there's been a considerable amount of, at least, anecdotal evidence that delivering cannabis through an inhalational route gets it into the body more efficiently, distributed better. This has to do really with the absorption properties of THC and other cannabinoids, which are absorbed with more difficulty from the gastrointestinal tract than some other medications.

That doesn't mean it cannot be administered by the gut, but it may be the case that giving it by mouth, we have to actually go to quite a bit higher doses than have traditionally been recommended, for Marinol, for instance.

FLATOW: Tell us what diseases marijuana has been shown to be useful for treating.

Dr. GRANT: Well, in terms of the research here at the University of California, it seems that painful peripheral neuropathy, which is a type of burning, painful, unpleasant condition that can develop as a consequence of AIDS or diabetes or some other factors, as well, that that type of pain, for which we don't have really terrific treatments, does respond to the cannabinoids.

And so it may form, you know, an additional arm in the therapeutic armamentarium here.

FLATOW: Nathan Seppa, in your cover story, you look at some other research being done with cannabis. Give us an idea of what the potential for this is in medicine.

Mr. SEPPA: Yes, I was surprised by the scientific literature out there that really doesn't see the light of day in the common press and just in conversations like this.

And it goes well beyond what we think of as ailments treated by medical marijuana, has even gone on to include beyond MS, which is now being sort of understood to be a good target, is also cancer, per se.

In other words, the fact that THC, at least in lab studies now, pretty clearly can kill cancer cells, and this is an interesting development since cannabis is already used with cancer patients, mainly for pain and appetite stimulation, that sort of thing.

FLATOW: And you say we don't hear about most of this research. Why is that?

Mr. SEPPA: Well, it gets published in legitimate journals, but they're not necessarily out there in the front lines.

FLATOW: Is it being suppressed?

Mr. SEPPA: There's no way of knowing. I do know that practically every researcher I talked to said it just was more difficult to get marijuana-related studies published because of the recreational use of the drug.

FLATOW: Now, there's also another ingredient called CBD. Can you tell us what that is?

Mr. SEPPA: CBD is a well-kept secret, and it's in some ways the alter-ego of THC, which is the best-known cannabis component. It's the thing that makes people high, and it also has all sorts of salutary medical effects.

CBD has its own pluses. It's an anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant, and it has the curious attribute of sort of negating the psychoactive effect of THC, or at least toning it down a bit, and this to researchers is a good thing because if they're going to use this as a medicinal drug, they'd just as soon not have the side effects.

FLATOW: Dr. Kleber, if smoking marijuana is shown to help people like this, what's wrong with that? You've written that you don't think it's right.

Dr. KLEBER: There's a number of problems with it, starting with the fact that we do have a Food and Drug Administration. There is no current medication being given by the smoking route, where you have all sorts of problems about potential lung cancer, and we do have a pill, which Dr. Grant has referred to, as did Nathan, and even though Nathan is right that there is better absorption by the smoked route, the beauty of the pill is that it lasts a lot longer.

And in many of the conditions for which THC might be useful, you want a longer duration of action than you want a quick up and down of the smoked route.

Also, nothing in any of these bills says anything about potency. When John Lennon in the '70s was talking about marijuana as a harmless giggle, marijuana was about two percent.

If you go into one of the numerous California dispensaries, it can go as high as 15 percent or more. And you're talking about a very potent drug there, and there's many, many side effects. We don't need the smoked route.

FLATOW: So there's no way for a doctor to say to you, if you really want to use it, try half a joint, half a cigarette, two, three because they really don't know what your level of tolerance is.

Dr. KLEBER: They don't know what your tolerance is, and the joint you buy today may be half the potency or twice the potency of the one that you buy tomorrow.

It's interesting that the current bill that's being proposed in New York state says you can purchase two and a half ounces, but it doesn't say two and a half ounces of what, whether it's the two percent or the 15 percent or whatever. So there's no way of a doctor being able to say here's what you should do.

And many of the claims for marijuana are really anecdotal. There's not a lot of controlled studies showing that it does work, and the whole point about cannabidiol is a fascinating one. I think there are potential therapeutic agents in a cannabis plant, and for example, a drug called Sativex has now been approved in Canada and in England for treatment of the spasms of multiple sclerosis and for neuropathic pain, and it is a combination of the THC and the cannabidiol taking by the aerosol route.

FLATOW: Dr. Earleywine, what's your reaction to this?

Dr. EARLEYWINE: The bottom line is this is really unethical to deny patients the relief that they can get from this plant because of these really miniscule, minor concerns that some physicians have because they're not accustomed to this.

The smoked route is not a preferable route, and we all understand that, but the cannabis vaporizer is available now, which is a gizmo that can heat cannabis to release the cannabinoids in a fine mist without lighting the plant on fire. Nobody gets any odd irritants for the respiratory system.

A student of mine and I have just published a paper showing that this will alleviate any respiratory symptoms people get if they are smoking cannabis. People who are concerned about potency are often connected to ideas about medications that are toxic. This is not a plant that creates a toxic dose.

More people die from taking aspiring than from smoking medical cannabis. Again, it's an issue where the potency problem is partly a product of prohibition. If we had the opportunity to test these strains and market them and list their THC concentration and their cannabidiol concentration, that would be great; but right now, in an underground market, who could afford to do that?

The bottom line is we've got compelling evidence that this can help headache and pain and nausea and vomiting and loss of appetite. If we're supposed to tell people with AIDS-related wasting that they can't use cannabis because they might get a cough, or we're afraid about the dosage, that's just offensive.

FLATOW: As someone who's an adviser to normal, are you suggesting that by legalizing marijuana, we might be able to study it more out in the open?

Dr. GRANT: Absolutely. Right now, the only way to get cannabis to administer in the laboratory is to go through an incredible process in order to get approval, and then you can only get one kind from one particular place, and only then if you got DEA approval. There are literally dozens of strains out there with all kinds of novel combinations of CBD and THC that need to be studied. And we're completely in the dark about this, and we're also falling behind other countries that aren't so prohibitionistic about all this. And I really feel like all our sick and dying are really suffering as a result.

FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255. Dr. Gordon in Berkeley, hi. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

Dr. GORDON (Caller): ...Ira, and hello to your panel. I'm a physician here near Berkeley who has issued, by now, a couple of thousand recommendations for medical marijuana. And it's been a very gratifying practice in helping people with serious medical conditions get some relief. But unlike many of my colleagues in the field, I don't think it's a panacea. I think patient selection is very important. And I'm very careful to talk about potential side effects, especially in young people.

But I wanted to remind you guys of the rimonabant experience. Rimonabant was a medicine developed in Europe and Israel for weight loss and diabetes control. And the way it worked was to block endogenous cannabinoid receptors in the human brain. And this was working very, very well for weight loss and diabetes, but there was a small problem in that people became very, very depressed, even suicidally depressed, and rimonabants had to be withdrawn from the market.

So I think the lesson there - and there was an interesting article relevant to this in JAMA not too long ago - is that maybe we need our - there is indigenous cannabinoid system. Michael Pollan has written about the co-evolution of cannabis with the human brain. And in human beings, it seems there are endogenous cannabinoids, and maybe some people are deficient in those endogenous cannabanoids, and recommending medical marijuana can be actually replacement therapy and useful for many conditions.

FLATOW: Well, let me get a reaction. Anybody want to - go ahead. We'll go through. Let me get Dr. Kleber here, first.

Dr. KLEBER: The point that more people die from aspirin than from marijuana is simply one of these misstatements. It's true that there hasn't been overdose deaths from marijuana. However, there have been many deaths related to marijuana and driving. And there have been, for example - there is very good evidence now about relationship with marijuana, especially when it's used during adolescence and early adulthood...

Dr. GORDON: Absolutely, absolutely.

Dr. KLEBER: ...and schizophrenia.

Dr. GORDON: Absolutely. And worsening anxiety and worsening executive function. It's not a totally benign substance. But, you know, I hear from patients on a daily basis about how, you know, their physicians have let them down and how marijuana has been effective for them. And in terms of young people, there is a concept of harm reduction, doctor, you know? If an 18-year-old has kind of a marginal indication from medical marijuana, I would still rather allow them access to a safe, well-lit place to buy a medicine rather than have them take their life into their hands. And maybe with each recommendation that I issue, I'm saving a life in Mexico.

FLATOW: All right, Dr. Gordon, thanks for calling.

Dr. GORDON: Okay, be well.

FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. We're talking about medical marijuana this hour on SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow, here with Nathan Seppa, Herbert Kleber, Igor Grant and Mitch Earleywine. Dr. Grant, what's your reaction to this? Yeah, don't we have - do we have a natural reception...

Dr. GRANT: This is an area where there's a lot of heat and not enough light, I would say. I think it is important to separate out the medical aspects of marijuana and how it would be used as a medicine, if it were to be shown that it's useful in certain conditions, to separate that out from recreational use and other kinds of factors.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

Dr. GRANT: With respect to the smoking route, I think everyone would agree that's not a preferred route. But that doesn't mean that it cannot be done safely under certain circumstances, in my opinion.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

Dr. GRANT: If marijuana were regulated like other drugs, controlled substances, one could, you know, think about pharmacies actually stocking the material at specific potency levels and so forth, so as to get people away from going on the street or to (unintelligible)...

FLATOW: Do you mean...

Dr. GRANT: ...which I agree are unregulated and actually can be dangerous.

FLATOW: Even you smoked it, you could have a certain...

Dr. GRANT: Yes, absolutely. And I was going to say, our studies were actually conducted as clinical trials with marijuana cigarettes supplied to us by the federal government at specified potencies, such as potencies of 4 percent or 7 percent, whatever it was that the clinical trial required. And also, by the way, they could supply placebo marijuana cigarettes, which smelled and tasted similar, but didn't have THC in them.

So it's completely possible to do these things and regulate them. Again, I don't want to come across as suggesting that smoking marijuana should be the preferred route of treating someone, but I can also envision a circumstance where people with severe illness or even terminal illnesses may find that route of administration to be a desirable, preferable - they might not even be able to tolerate an oral form for various reasons. And so in that circumstance, I'd say, if it's properly regulated, controlled, treated like a legitimate medicine, I think we'd probably be okay.

FLATOW: Nathan, some states allow marijuana for hepatitis C or Alzheimer's. Has it been studied for those diseases?

Mr. SEPPA: To my knowledge, only preliminarily. But, you know, you have to remember something about North American marijuana, which is, for years now, it's been recreationally grown. In other words, by definition, the growers wanted to have a lot of THC and not a lot of CBD. They have no medical interest in that.

And so, you know, my question for the other doctors here is at what point does one offset, you know, the other? In other words, how much of a psychoactive effect can you put up with if you've got someone who has cancer, who has AIDS who needs this drug?

FLATOW: All right. We're going to - we'll come back and answer that question after this break. Our number: 1-800-989-8255. You can also tweet us

View the Original article

Liftoff, A space telescope tours Earth

Add to playlist to add download

The James Webb Space Telescope to erfüllen.Das Science Friday video.

Text size A A A June 25, 2010

A full model that James Webb Space is the proposed successor to Hubble, telescope on the Rennstrecke--performances at science conferences and festivals.Science Friday met with the Observatory and spoke to its handler in New York City's battery Park.

Copyright © 2010 national public radio ®. for only personal, non-commercial use.See "Terms and conditions". for other uses, permission required.

IRA FLATOW, host:

Are from NPR SCIENCE Friday, listen. I am Ira Flatow.

Time now for flora - Hi, flora.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hello.

FLATOW: Flora Lichtman's video pick of the week.It is great with our video Pick.Another here is one.

LICHTMAN: Thanks, IRA.

FLATOW: have you what for us this week?

LICHTMAN: It's a little meet - and - successor to the Hubble greets with a telescope that you may be unfamiliar with noch.Der is the James Webb Space Telescope, and it has not yet started was. It is due until 2014.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

LICHTMAN: But as part of its kind coming out party, I think, was parading NASA art to this full scale model around the world. It was after Munich and Dublin, Seattle...

FLATOW: It has this little has sticker on it from all these different places.

(Soundbite laugh)

LICHTMAN: Yes, there are tons of images of people, nature, how to give a hug this huge Centre.

FLATOW: Right.

LICHTMAN: How he came to New York and we met with him and spoke with some his handler, what the James Webb, to do.

FLATOW: It is quite large.I think you've got a good place for you, not to have?

LICHTMAN: Yes, it was Battery Park, the city centre.It takes a large area, because it is the size of a tennis court.

FLATOW: Wow.

LICHTMAN: On - so you think that's the amazing thing about the way that see it, is something the size of a tennis court a million miles away, is up in the room, where it is as received?

And what was clean was hearing on the engineering of this device.So basically, you have it folds up like a know how a flower which then, once will unfold it gets to its destination.But as you can imagine, there are a lot of tricky engineering...

FLATOW: Yes.

LICHTMAN:... in.

FLATOW: Yes.So if you go to our website at sciencefriday.com, you can see flora's video, an interview with the people there, and see, how to do this - almost magically to unfold.It's amazing how.

LICHTMAN: It's pretty amazing.And I think the other - one of the other tricky things about building we learned was, that this huge mirror haben.Und that are mirror like - it's James Webb as eight out of Hubble's Optics - Optics passen.So much larger reden.Und that James Webb, by the way, is an infrared Observatory and Hubble is we sichtbar.Und what this should allow us to do further back in time to see.

But part of this builds these huge mirrors.And you said that you actually to get atoms shave at have...

FLATOW: It is so precise, you've got it to shave the atom.

LICHTMAN: That's right, thats right get only to prescription unglaublich.Ich my so you focus the light in the other mirrors, which then collects and...

FLATOW: Are to not use a ShamWow to clean up.

LICHTMAN: No, in fact.

(Soundbite laugh)

LICHTMAN: No, and it is from beryllium, also, because the other thing I had not thought, is it pretty cold in the room, it turns out...

FLATOW: Yes.

LICHTMAN:... like so you have to make negative 400 degrees Celsius.Und sounds like this is this special Materialien.Es part - it's part of the challenge only find, what material you make on a mirror or mirror this - can work these conditions.

FLATOW: Ja.Und I think - and, of course, its shape is, has to keep because it to a mirror set you're going to make a certain form, it must be - that is why you use the material.

LICHTMAN: Right.Und test it here on the Erde.Sie have kind of make it in a recipe that at room temperature, another form is know as there in colder temperatures it so a quantity, kind, tricky Engineering.Und fact, it took my 20 Jahre.Ich, the plans for this telescope began this - happens before Hubble went.

FLATOW: Wow.Hoffen we, you don't have this pair of glasses on this one to put.

(Soundbite laugh)

FLATOW: I mean fix while it here in the ground.

LICHTMAN: I think it will be difficult, because there the Lagrange point number two, so headed...

FLATOW: This is far out.

LICHTMAN: This is quite far.

FLATOW: Ja.Gut - and you can see that this James Webb telescope it most - flora went out there with a camera and interviewed people in Battery Park here in New York.Und on our website at sciencefriday.com, pick of the week there on the left, click on it, click on a larger portion of it and watch it and share with your friends to go.

LICHTMAN: please.

FLATOW: Thank Dank.Danke, flora.

LICHTMAN: Thanks, IRA.

FLATOW: Have a great weekend.

Copyright © 2010 national public radio ® .all rights vorbehalten.Keine can quotes from the materials contained herein in any any medium without attribution, national public radio used werden.Dieses Protocol is for personal, noncommercial use only, in accordance with our terms and conditions bereitgestellt.Jede other use required of the prior consent of NPR.Besuchen our site with permissions for more Informationen.NPR transcripts are created on a rush period by a contractor for NPR and accuracy and availability may variieren.Dieser text in its final form and can be updated or revised in the Zukunft.Bitte consider that the authoritative record of NPR programming is the audio. related NPR stories the Hubble turns 20 April 23, 2010 new space telescope will FITT Hubble May 2007 e-Mail share comments print Facebook stumble upon reddit Twitter Digg what is this? share space new SETI@home Chief on search for ExtraterrestrialsDistant chemistry sparks thoughts of life podcast

View the Original article

How The Sense Of Touch Influences The Mind

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Reporting in Science, researchers describe 's judgments and decision-making processes. John Bargh, a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale, discusses the findings, including why sitting on a hard wooden chair may turn people into tougher negotiators.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, host:

You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow.

If you go to your car dealership - have you been out to one lately? - you may find that the car salesman wants to close the deal, sell you the car, right as you sit in that plush driver's seat. No need to go back to that cramped office. He'll just whip out his iPad and write up the paperwork, punch it in there, right there in the car.

The car dealer may know something that you don't, something that my next guest studies: your sense of touch. That soft, cushy leather may influence your decision-making and break down your ability to be a hard bargainer. He published his work on touch and decision in this week's Science. John Bargh is a professor of psychology in cognitive science at Yale University. He joins us by phone. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

Professor JOHN A. BARGH (Psychology, Yale University): Thank you, Ira. It's a pleasure to be here.

FLATOW: You're welcome. Do you think that car salesman knew something about...

Prof. BARGH: Oh, they know a lot that...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Prof. BARGH: ...they don't let on to us, that's for sure.

FLATOW: But your work involves sitting in soft or hard seats, doesn't it?

Prof. BARGH: Are you sitting in one right now?

FLATOW: I'm in a soft seat, yes.

Prof. BARGH: Me too.

FLATOW: Oh, that's good because if I were in a hard one, you're saying I might - you might have an advantage on me.

Prof. BARGH: Of course. And I've also got a nice hot cup of coffee in my hand.

FLATOW: Tell us about why - how that affects the way we deal with each other.

Prof. BARGH: Well, the interesting thing here is that the physical sensations that you pick up from just mere touching or your bodily contact. For example, it's not just all hands. It's, you know, this happens through the seat of your pants, too, like you just said, with the hard chairs or soft chairs.

The interesting thing is that these concepts have metaphorical meaning. So when we talk about something hard, we don't just mean something physically hard but we can mean something difficult or we can mean something that wasn't - didn't go so easily and so forth. So the - it's interesting how many of these terms have physical reference.

We talk about close relationships, but we talk about a warm person, but that warm person is the same body temperature, 98.6 Fahrenheit, you know, as the rest of us, and not any warmer or colder. And yet we talk about people in these - with these physical terms so easily and fluently and we all know what each other means. I mean, it's something very natural. And I think this reflects something in other people like George Lakoff, especially, for many years, a philosopher at Berkeley, has, for many years, argued that these reflect some connection or architecture of our mind...

FLATOW: Uh-huh.

Prof. BARGH: ...where the more abstract concepts we form in childhood and adulthood are based on these early-formed physical concepts that we make in -basically in infancy and early childhood.

FLATOW: So let's talk about some of the - some of these things that you studied in your paper, and one of them was this - the seat that we're talking about. What's the difference between if I'm sitting in a hard seat or a soft seat?

Prof. BARGH: So the way this works is if you're sitting in a hard seat, that would, I guess, activate a concept of hardness in your mind. This experience is - just being in a hard chair, the chair is hard so the concept in your mind of hardness is activated, the physical sense of hardness.

However, over your life, you've developed other meanings for that word and other abstract meanings like difficult and so forth. And they're also in that concept now. So even though the concept may have started out...

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

Prof. BARGH: ...with only physical reference, it acquires these other reference. So now, by sitting on a hard chair, the concept of hardness physically is activated, but also gives other meanings, like difficulty or so forth. And this happens with the one - with smoothness and roughness as well. Touching something that's rough activates the concept of roughness, which also has acquired these new additional meanings of something that's rough and has resistance and doesn't go smoothly. And now - what we have now, is a bias that's been activated. So (unintelligible)...

FLATOW: And you can actually measure that bias.

Prof. BARGH: Exactly, we can put people in...

FLATOW: So if I'm sitting in a hard seat, you can actually measure that I'm a harder person.

Prof. BARGH: We can, for example, put people around a table as you opened up with there, and have them sit on hard or soft chairs and see how easily they negotiate with each other. For example, do they compromise?

FLATOW: Right.

Prof. BARGH: Or maybe they don't compromise. So if you're sitting in that soft chair, you're not going to be that willing at the car dealership - as in your great example - you're not going to be so able to - or maybe even willing, to negotiate with the car salesman.

FLATOW: And also you - as you say, you've discovered this with smooth or rough surfaces. I can become a tougher person to deal with, if I'm touching a rougher surface.

Prof. BARGH: Exactly. And, in fact, we just came up with a new one I don't think people have studied yet, the tough one, you know? For example, it's possible, if we have people on our studies chew a piece of tough steak. You know, they'll be tougher on other people and, you know, not evaluate them so well, that kind of thing. It's really remarkable. I dont know if we saw this coming, like, 10 years ago in the field. This was also pretty much last five years that we've...

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

Prof BARGH: ...seen how closely our mental life, our thoughts are tied to our physical bodies, you know, this mind-body dualism that Descartes and others have classically talked about in philosophy, as if the mind was an idealized, separate thing from the body. I think this research really demolishes that dualism because our thoughts are tied very closely to our physical experiences - and, of course, without our knowing it.

FLATOW: Let's go to Marge in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. Hi, Marge.

MARGE (Caller): Hi. My first - my comment is - I'm delighted you're finally studying the sense of touch. I read Ashley Montagu's book...

Prof. BARGH: Mm-hmm.

MARGE: ..."Touching" in the '50s. And he was predominantly talking about (unintelligible) - the - even how digestion is improved. And I'm totally blind and - so, I read Braille, and so on.

Prof. BARGH: Mm-hmm.

MARGE: I'm sitting in a soft chair holding a kitty right now...

Prof. BARGH: Mm-hmm.

MARGE: ...feeling pretty relaxed.

Prof. BARGH: Mm-hmm.

MARGE: And - but - and I think you'd answered my question.

FLATOW: Well, let me ask you, Marge. If you're holding a hot cup of coffee, does that even relax you - make you a warmer person?

MARGE: Absolutely.

FLATOW: And that's what you found out also, John. Isn't it?

Prof. BARGH: That was a paper we had come out two years ago. Lawrence Williams - who's now at Colorado - and I started looking at hot and cold coffee. We were struck by the fact that we talk about people being warm or cold, and how that makes a huge difference in how we form impressions of them.

If you hear about somebody and they're a warm person, you like them great and you think the other things you learn about them are all positive, too, when a cold person is just seen as not retrievable...

FLATOW: Right.

Prof. BARGH: ...just a person who just - you just - are not going to be dealing with. But no one ever asked the question: Why do we use those terms? Instead of something like cooperative and competitive or friend or foe or good or bad -but we don't.

We use the specific terms, warm and cold. And again, this reflects some deep connection to actual physical warmth or coldness. And, you know, all these studies have looked at - Marge, you it might be, you know, interested in where these things came from, originally.

And what we're thinking is that your early experience as a child really has a lot more to do with the physical world than anything else, because when you're a child or an infant, you're not really able yet to compare things to your memory. That's why we don't have very good memories, you know, before the age of four or three. It's not something we can do yet. We can't compare our current experience to our past experience through retrieving memories.

So, the concept - the only concepts, really, that infants can form are those where the information's right out there in front of them all the time. They can compare things they're seeing right now. They can see things that are far apart or close together.

They can touch something and feel something warm. They can explore with their hands and sense roughness and sense smoothness and something hard. All these things are available to infants because they're all - they're readily in their sensory experience. And they don't have to use their memory or other kinds of advanced thought techniques or thought strategies that you can develop only later at four or five and later years.

So that's why these physical concepts get in there early. And then - of course, we all know about the power of the importance of early learning and early experience in childhood, how that sets you up, often, for the rest of your whole life with your temperament and everything else.

So these early concepts had a huge influence on both of the development of further abstract concepts about, say, cooperating or helping and things like that. And also, you know, they're still there in adulthood and they're still very much influencing us as adults.

FLATOW: Thanks for the call, Marge. I think have - quickly for Deidre in Cleveland. Hi, Deidre.

DEIDRE (Caller): Hi, thanks for taking my call.

FLATOW: All right. Go ahead.

DEIDRE: My question is - back to the comfy chair versus the hard chair.

Prof. BARGH: Mm-hmm.

DEIDRE: I'm a student, and in one of my classes, there are some hard chairs and there are some more plush chairs, though nothing's really comfortable like a La-Z-Boy.

Prof. BARGH: Mm-hmm.

DEIDRE: Have you studied how that influences how we learn in classroom, and maybe look at the difficulty of the subject?

Prof. BARGH: No, we haven't. This paper that came out today is the first study showing these effects at all. So, there are really a lot of interesting follow-ups. I think you just hit on one that would be an excellent...

FLATOW: That'd be good. Can you make a subject easier to absorb by being in a softer chair?

Prof. BARGH: I would think so. I mean, the idea is that the hardness of the chair would make you probably experience the subject matter as harder or more difficult.

Now I think there's individual differences that might operate. For example, there are some people who, when something as hard, they might give up or they might walk away from it and not engage it because they think it's too hard.

Other people, if something is hard, they increase their effort. They say, okay, it's going to take more effort for me to master this material. And actually, that might help that person.

So I have a feeling that it might be some people are helped and some people are harmed, depending on how they face difficult things in their life, usually.

FLATOW: Can we help shape how people react to us by offering them a hot cup of coffee or a softer chair or, you know, be an easier(ph) negotiation? Can we make use of this knowledge?

Prof. BARGH: This is an interesting topic, because I think by talking about this today, Ira, and having this paper come out in Science and all that, I think we might have started an arms race...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Prof. BARGH: ...in that we have two sides of this. We have the person trying to influence your impression, but you also have a person on guard about these influence attempts. And sometimes when people overdo these ingratiation or tactics, you catch on to it. And if you catch to what a person is trying to do - by being too flattering, you know, for example - then usually, it backfires.

So, it's possible that if someone catches onto this - and now, everyone knows that, say, about, the coffee or the chair effect - that if they see you doing it, it might actually backfire.

So I would suggest being subtle if you try this at home or at the office. But at the same time, watch out for these effects in you own life - in your own decisions.

FLATOW: Interesting. Couple of weeks ago, we had a story about washing your hands will make you help you change your decision about something.

Prof. BARGH: Mm-hmm.

FLATOW: And so, maybe you should go wash your hands after - somebody's offered you a hot cup of coffee so you can think about it a little bit.

Prof. BARGH: That's an excellent idea. Yeah. The Macbeth effect of...

FLATOW: That's right.

Prof. BARGH: ...washing your hands on moral judgments, too, is a famous new one from the last two or three years.

FLATOW: So where do you go next on this?

Prof. BARGH: Well, we're in - generally, looking for the priming effects. What are called these priming effects are activations coming from the outside environment on - in your mind that then bias you or create different ways of thinking that you wouldn't engage in normally.

So, the (unintelligible) touch mode of physical experiences is now very important one in the paper. Senior author Josh Ackerman writes a really nice section about how hands are so important for exploration and acquisition of information in infancy and young childhood. Again, that emphasizes that point about the importance of early childhood experience. Where we're going, I think, is along the line of Deidre's question and maybe Marge's question, too, in that I'd like to find out more about how people already know about these effects.

For example, with the effect of warmth, we all know that a warm fireplace is wonderful to have people sit around and warm drinks or, you know, even alcoholic beverages that warm the throat give you a warm feeling inside are really important for social gatherings and social warmth.

So I have a feeling at some deep level, we sort of appreciate these already, but we may not know it explicitly. Like, we are, you know, surprised by these findings, and no one has shown these things before. But at another level, we seem implicitly aware of them, and I'd like to find out more about how we are aware of these and use these ourselves in our lives.

FLATOW: Well, John, I want to give you a warm goodbye - a hearty, warm handshake, you know, a warm handshake, too.

Prof. BARGH: Very much appreciated.

FLATOW: You're welcome. John Bargh is a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

Related NPR Stories The Magic of the Human Mind Aug. 18, 2006 Experimental Therapy Heightens Sense of Touch July 3, 2003   E-mail Share Comments Print Facebook Stumble Upon Reddit Twitter Digg What is this?

Share   Humans Immortality Explored In 'Long For This World'Preserving Navajo History In Canyon De Chelly APR'Lucy' Predecessor Turns Back The Clock On Walking Podcast

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Ships one oily on the Gulf cleaned at A time

Debbie Elliott/NPR zoom

A shrimp trawler Gets a high spray wash after one day skimming oil into the Gulf of Mexiko.Die coastguard stations such as this one South of Mobile Bay has established dozens of offshore decontamination.

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Magic Tricks Amuse Even In Extraordinary Times

Add to Playlist Download   text size A A A June 26, 2010

We live in a time where we expect to see amazing things before our eyes, like space ships streaking between stars. Dinosaurs returning to life. Whole planets blossoming with beautiful blue people. So how do you expect to impress people just by sawing someone in half or picking the ace of spades out of a deck of cards? Host Scott Simon visits the Conjuring Arts Research Center in New York to talk with director and magician William Kalush.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

SCOTT SIMON, host:

We live in a time where we expect to see extraordinary things before our eyes: space ships streaking between stars, dinosaurs returning to life, whole planets blossoming with beautiful blue people. So how do you expect to impress people just by sawing someone in half or picking the ace of spades out of a deck of cards?

But magic can still enthrall us. Anyone with an interest in what must be the world's oldest other profession, I'd want to schedule a visit to the Conjuring Arts Research Center. It's a small, dark library in the shadow of the Empire State Building in New York City, crammed to the rafters with personal letters from magicians and books on magic that predate Columbus.

William Kalush is the founder of the center. He says magic goes way, way back.

Mr. WILLIAM KALUSH (Conjuring Arts Research Center): What's the oldest thing we know about?

SIMON: Yeah.

Mr. KALUSH: There's an Egyptian papyrus in the Berlin Museum that tells a story of a magician named Dedi of Ded-Snefru, doing an effect for King Cheops, the great - famous for building the Great Pyramid. And he does a thing where he takes an animal and decapitates it and takes its head - I think he used a duck - and shows that its head's over here and the body's over here and he puts them back together, and duck is perfectly fine and goes on to live.

SIMON: Wow. Wow.

Mr. KALUSH: And I've heard academics talk about this papyrus and they say, well, no, these are fairy tales. But I know as a magician this can be done. In fact, we created a method to do this and then actually performed this a few years back on a television show. And it really just looks like that. It looks like youve taken a chicken - we used a chicken - taken its head off, here's its head, here's its body, and you put it back together.

And now put that 5,000 years ago. This papyrus is about 2500 B.C. - so its pretty close to 5,000 years old.

SIMON: Yeah.

Mr. KALUSH: So that's the earliest. But then there's a big gap and we start getting stories about magicians performing things that we would recognize again, by the time of Christ, about the first century A.D. And then books start to be written telling secrets, and there's some really good things that we could still use as magicians today that were written 2,000 years ago.

SIMON: Like what?

Mr. KALUSH: Well, what can I tell you without tipping too much? There are ways to read minds that are 2,000 years old that still work. There are methods to take your hands in front of the entire audience without sort of covering, take a pot of oil, put it on a fire - when it starts to boil you put your hands in the oil.

SIMON: Ah.

Mr. KALUSH: Take them out.

SIMON: Yeah.

Mr. KALUSH: They're fine. Now you throw the vegetables in, which start to cook and you can make dinner. And this is a method that's still great and would still fool anybody today, yet it's 2,000 years old.

SIMON: Youve done that?

Mr. KALUSH: I haven't done it personally. I would though. I mean weve thought about it.

SIMON: This is something like Jamie Oliver should do on his show.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. KALUSH: This could absolutely be done.

SIMON: I dont want Nigella to harm herself. But in any event, I dont want Jamie Oliver to harm himself either. But in any event...

Mr. KALUSH: But then there's a jump again, and then when books start happening now, there's lots of records of books - of non-printed books, if you'd like to go into the rare book room.

SIMON: Yeah. Yeah, please.

Mr. KALUSH: Ill show you some of the things that weve managed to collect here.

SIMON: Okay.

Mr. KALUSH: It's a little bit warm, but I'm not going to turn the air on because...

SIMON: This place is beautiful.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. KALUSH: Thank you.

SIMON: And huge show posters here of, if I knew my conjurers a little better...

Mr. KALUSH: Well, there's Karmie(ph), buried alive for 32 days. Actually was an American, wasnt Indian at all - professed to be an Indian. Fannis(ph), who had now, this is in the '30s, would memorize well in excess of 100,000 telephone numbers. The books, this is where we keep all the books printed and the manuscript books before 1900. And the earliest complete book we have, originally it was written in about 1280.

SIMON: Mm-hmm.

Mr. KALUSH: The first time it was printed was in the 1470s. This example is about from 1480 and it was printed in Rome and it's in Latin. And this particular book is attributed to Albertus Magnus. He's now a saint but he wrote about a lot of interesting things, and in this book he writes about secrets and one of which is how to take a dead fly and resuscitate it, bring it back to life. And here it is, written in the 13th century and printed in the 15th century.

SIMON: Now, if I asked you how do you resuscitate a dead fly, would it be against the code for you to tell me?

Mr. KALUSH: I wouldnt tell you. No. I might tell you the path you might take to go find that method yourself. For example, I've already told you that it's somewhere in this book in Medieval Latin. You might be able to find a copy of this book someplace and find somebody who can translate it...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. KALUSH: ...and that could tell you what the method is. I wouldn't mind helping you find the method, but I wouldn't want to just tell you the method, because what we're doing here is teaching more than just exposing secrets.

SIMON: Show a man how to do a magic trick and he does a magic trick for a day. Teach him how to do a magic trick and he does magic for life?

Mr. KALUSH: Right. Entertain him for an hour or teach him how to entertain for the rest of his life.

One of the things we do here is we have an outreach program where we send professional magicians into hospitals and they teach kids in hospitals, kids in community centers, and also kids in detention centers, how to do magic. And it's really not about physical therapy. It's really about mental therapy. It's about the ability to project yourself and to show a little initiative and built self esteem.

SIMON: I'm interested in this because (unintelligible) with a kid who's considered to be at risk. He or she learns how to do a series of magic tricks and it lifts their definition of themselves.

Mr. KALUSH: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's all about feeling like you've got some power over your own life, because it's not just about performing tricks. We don't like that word, trick. And you know, sometimes magicians use it, but I think it's the wrong word. I think that it's really about an effect and about a performance and about magic.

And so what we teach these children and the veterans is about having a power. And the power is maybe I can read minds. Maybe I want to have the power to put a solid object through a solid object. And so we create a small set of powers and let the kids choose what power they want to have. It's pretty exciting.

SIMON: There's so much that we can look at now, and for that matter youngsters are growing up with now, that seems like magic, that we know is done by special effects and it's done by computer graphics and it's just, I mean, you see astonishing things. Whole worlds are created that way. Has that made it rougher for magic - conjuring?

Mr. KALUSH: I think - to be honest, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked. And I think that it's made it not rougher. I think it's actually opened the door even wider for us.

Because one of the reasons it's special is because a great - in my - from my perspective, a great performance of magic always involves the audience, whether they pick this card or whether they choose this or when it's a mind-reading effect, what have I done with this and what am I think - these are all things that affect the outcome of the show. So the audience becomes integral.

And I think because of that factor, as long as magicians continue to use that, all of this technology, whether it's in film, whether it's the iPad - which looks like magic to me - I don't think it's going to affect the performer.

SIMON: What's the importance of keeping conjuring going?

Mr. KALUSH: Well, I think a day without wonder is really a terrible day. I think that what keeps people, what keeps science moving forward, what keeps our human spirit, is curiosity and wonder. And I think that as magicians, what we can do when the performer is accomplished, we can give you a peak into what a world would look like if magic were real. I think that if we can allow our audience to feel like there's real wonder and magic in the world, then we've done our job.

SIMON: Thanks very much.

Mr. KALUSH: Well, thank you.

SIMON: Nice talking to you. Thanks for all..

Mr. KALUSH: Yeah, this was wonderful.

SIMON: William Kalush, founder of the Conjuring Arts Research Center in New York.

(Soundbite of music)

SIMON: We have nothing up our sleeve. You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

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Share   Pop Culture A Hollywood Story In 'Everything Lovely''Just Good Enough' Never Good Enough For the 'King Of Pop' Podcast

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Tropical Storms Threaten Oil Spill Cleanup

von The Associated Press Text size A A A Juni 26, 2010

Die Logistik der enthalten des Öls in den Golf von Mexiko speien sind umwerfend, sogar unter idealen Bedingungen.Fügen Sie einen tropischer Sturm wie die einer wirbelnden in der Karibik und Dinge werden noch komplizierter.

Jedem System mit Winde, die über 46 mph, BP zwingen könnte, Bemühungen um den Fluss für bis zu zwei Wochen enthalten und verzögern das Bohren von zwei Relief-Brunnen, die die beste Hoffnung es zu stoppen sind zu verlassen, sagte Küstenwache Admiral Thad Allen am Samstag, kurz nachdem Alex der erste tropische Sturm der atlantischen Hurrikansaison wurde.

Prognosen zeigen Alex Buttern in Richtung Mexiko und Fehlen der nördlichen Golfküste und die Spill, aber Beamte sind gerade eng sowieso.

"Wir alle wissen, das Wetter ist unberechenbar, und wir konnten eine plötzliche, Last-Minute-Änderung,", sagte Allen.

Notfallpläne rufen für Verschieben von Arbeitnehmer und Ausrüstung fünf Tage vor Sturmstärke Windstärken um die Hälfte-Quadrat-Meile-Containment-Betrieb rund um die geblasen zu erreichen-gut aus.Öl hat sprudeln worden, da das Offshore-Bohrungen Rig Deepwater Horizon 50 Meilen vor der Küste von Louisiana am 20, explodierte 11 Arbeitnehmer zu töten.

Arbeiten dort in anderen Teilen des Golfs und an Land zu überfliegen und das Öl corral, schützen Hunderte von Meilen Küstenlinie und saubere verschmutzt Strände, fast 39.000 Menschen und mehr als 6.000 Boote.All diese Bemühungen müssten ausgesetzt werden, wenn ein Sturm bedroht.

Am Brunnen den zwei Systemen, die überall von 840.000 bis 1,2 Millionen Gallonen Öl aufnehmen wurde haben ein Tag aufgehoben, Öl, um wieder frei in den Golf Gusch verlassen wäre.Niemand weiß genau wie viel fließt, aber Worst-Case-Schätzungen zufolge könnte es weniger als 2,5 Millionen Gallonen pro Tag sein.

Arbeit aufhören würde auch auf die zwei Relief-Brunnen, den Druck der geblasen-gut, als die einzige dauerhafte Lösung gebohrt wird.Die erste ist auf Ziel für die Fertigstellung von Mitte August, aber es kann eine merkliche Verzögerung, wenn Menschen und Schiffe an Land, kommen um einen Sturm Reiten.

Trotz der Rückschlag, den eine Aussetzung darstellen würde, "die Sicherheit des Lebens ist Priorität Nummer eins," sagte Allen.

Aus im Golf gibt es auch Besorgnis über den Tausenden Füße der schützende Boom Klingeln, zahlreiche Inseln und Beachfronts.Wind und Wellen konnte das Material, vieles davon getränkt mit Öl, tief in die Sümpfe und Wälder schleudern.

"Was Sie nicht abholen Boom — und es gibt Meilen und Meilen, so keine Möglichkeit besteht, Sie können pick it all up - werden am Ende wieder in die moorig," sagte Ivor van Heerden, ehemaliger stellvertretender Direktor der Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center.

Sobald ein Sturm der erwarteten Richtung bestimmt ist, Lastkähne und Besatzungen planen, so viel Boom in seinem Weg wie möglich zu entfernen, die sagte Sam Phillips, fester Abfälle ermöglicht Administrator mit der Louisiana Abteilung Umweltqualität. Der Boom würde auf Lastkähne gespeichert werden, so dass es zurück schnell umgesetzt werden könnte.

"Natürlich, es würde nicht widerstehen einen Hurrikan" Phillips sagte.

Arbeitnehmer hätte wahrscheinlich die genug Zeit, um die meisten der exponierten Boom abrufen, sagte er.

"Sie verschieben können viele Boom in 48 Stunden, wenn dies Ihre alleinige Unterfangen wäre,", sagte er. "Können Sie alle es erhalten? Wahrscheinlich nicht."

Die Spill — und die Aussicht auf ein Hurrikan entspannt ölig Wasser in Bayous und Küstengemeinden — ist auch Komplikationen den bereits komplexen Hurrikan, der Planung, der jeden Sommer stattfindet.

Schließlich ist dies ein Bereich, der ist kein Fremder in großen Stürme.2005 Folgte die verheerenden Hurrikan Katrina sofort die Hurrikan Rita. Drei Jahre später kam die Hurricanes Gustav und Ivan hintereinander.

BP, der Küstenwache und den Zustand der Lousiana haben bereits gesprochen, über wie Evakuierungen zu koordinieren, damit Arbeitnehmer und Ausrüstungen, die in der Öl-Spill-Antwort Autobahn Fluchtwege nicht verstopfen.

Beamte in Küstengebieten St. Bernard Parish lokalen Agenturen eine Frist für die Gliederung Evakuierungspläne, gab, sagte Pfarrei Sprecherin Jennifer Belsom.Sie bestätigte, Unsicherheiten, die durch die Spill stellte auch die besten Pläne flummox könnte.

"Es gibt alle Arten von was Ifs,", sagte sie.

Tausende von Familien sagte, dass Verlust von Arbeitsplätzen aufgrund die Spill möglicherweise weniger Ressourcen für ein Sturm Evakuierung, Mark Cooper, Direktor des Office of Homeland Security und Emergency Preparedness des Gouverneurs von Louisiana.

Pete Gerica, sagt Fischer wie er, die in der Regel aus Stürme in Ihre Boote fahren auch zweite Meinung dieses Jahr wegen der die Spill haben könnte.Öligen Wasser durchgeführt durch die Sturmflut könnte schwierig zu reinigen.

"Wie würden Sie bereinigen es?" sagte er."Sie haben zu bereinigen, Schlamm und Öl.Können Sie, aus der die Wände reinigen?Wer weiß."

Es ist auch unklar, was ein Sturm tun würde, um Öl schwebend in den Golf.

Einige Angst hohe Winde und großen Wellen könnte Sie tiefer in Flussmündungen und Feuchtgebiete drücken.Eine Sturmflut von mehreren Metern könnte es im Landesinneren, erstellen eine durcheinander.Aber ein Sturm könnte auch helfen, zerstreuen und brechen einige der das Öl.

Egal was mit Hurrikan Alex passiert ist es wahrscheinlich nur der Anfang.Meteorologen Vorhersagen eine geschäftigen Hurrikan-Saison mit mächtigen Stürme.

Jeff Masters, Direktor der Meteorologie für forecasting Service Weather Underground, sagte Spill-Responder möglicherweise zu überdenken ihre fünf-Tage-Fensters Containment Bemühungen auszusetzen, da Stürme oft schneller als das ändern müssen.

Wenn Sie nicht differenzierten Plan entwickeln, sagte er, bedeutet"das Sie gehen zu viele Fehlalarme haben werden, wo Sie nehmen unnötig hinunter Ihren Betrieb oder werden Sie Leben am Risiko, eine oder die andere setzen."

Ist e-Mail-Share Kommentare Drucken Facebook Stumble Upon Reddit Twitter Digg was das?Aktie Umwelt Stormy Weather konnte Verzögerung Oil Spill Cleanup EffortsCleanup Jobs Are Hard To Find In The GulfForget-Hybriden; Make Your Own Elektroauto KAZU Podcast

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Delay the inevitable is booming cleanup efforts; fight.

Brian Naylor/NPR

The Pelican Rookery on Cat Island is protected by double Outrigger many birds still show signs of oil contamination.

Text size A A A June 27, 2010

While oil beaches and marshes from Louisiana has fouled to Florida, the majority has not achieved.Yet, their effects are easily visible even where cleanup efforts most intense been. South of New Orleans, Barataria Bay is full of shrimp, fish, birds and mammals - and now oil, a natural treasure.

"Brent Ballay directs its 23 foot skiff on water, stop at one point, he describes as a very, very oily swamp." It's pretty evil – indeed disgusting. "It's only wave after wave of oil here for close to two months been."

Below are some inches from the swamp grass is braun.Stillstehend long absorbent booms are saturated with oil in the water before the grass, looking for something like fat Anaconda snakes.

The boom "do much good to prevent that the oil further isn't moved to country" says Amanda Moore of the National Wildlife Federation."Once it is been oiled as follows, it is useless."Moore, who is to make clean-up, is unhappy about what she sees.

No escape for wildlife

The oil is not only on the banks of the Marschland.Sie coats water sometimes appear as a shimmering shine, at other times as reddish brown Flecken.Trotz of all skimming and establishing boom there is plenty of oil in the Bay of Barataria.doch it also much life gibt.Steigen of a couple of dolphins alongside Ballay's boat out oily Wasser.Ballay it says a mother and baby.

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Forget hybrids, make your own electric car

Enlarge Krista Almanzan for NPR

Mike Brown (left), owner of electro automotive works on a gas to electric car conversion with a student, Daniel Marcom.Brown has the parts to make such conversions since 1979 sold.

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Nervous about Alzheimer's disease? Coffee may help

Zoom by Cory Morse / Muskegon Chronicle about AP

Mary VanDam pouring coffee for patron Jim Brumm Mr. B's Pancake House in Lake Township, Michigan

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Stormy weather could delay oil spill cleanup efforts.

Zoom by Joe Raedle / Getty Images

The impending storm could postpone BP plans to double the amount of oil from the spill Aufnahmen.Hier, uses a boat a boom and absorbent material to enjoy oil on the surface of the water in the vicinity of Grand Isle, Louisiana, on Monday.

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Herbal Tea Revolution

Es ist nicht ungewöhnlich für mich, ein Glas biodynamische oder organische Rotwein mit mein Abend-Mahlzeit zu haben. Wie ich Abendessen gestern Abend geplant hatte, bekam ich zu denken, warum ich Wein genießen und auch über die eher erhebliche Anzahl von Menschen, die können oder nicht, die einschließen von Alkohol in Ihr Leben. Gedacht, dass Prozess führen mich zu einer Entscheidung zu eine Tasse Kamille Tee anstatt meine üblichen Glas des Pinot Noir zu brauen. Ich erinnerte mich an eine Studie aus dem letzten Jahr, die die Anti-Angst-Eigenschaften der Kamille beschrieben. So fragte ich mich, ob diese pflanzliche brauen eine ähnliche beruhigende Wirkung bieten könnte, wie ich kommen würde, zu erwarten, von Wein. Ich war angenehm überrascht, zu finden, dass es getan hat. Diese Erfahrung ist die Grundlage für mein gesundes Montag-Tipp der Woche: mehr Kräuter Tee trinken! (1)

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Coconut Dessert Recipes

Meine Frau und ich hatten das Vergnügen, feiern Vatertag mit meinen Eltern und Schwester am vergangenen Wochenende. Es kann als keine Überraschung kommen, aber das Thema Gesundheit fast immer erscheint immer dann, wenn wir zusammenkommen. Die bedauerliche Realität ist, dass einige der Geschichten, die wir diskutieren eher ernüchternd. Zum Beispiel erwähnt meine Mutter einen alten Freund der Familie, der jetzt in ihren späten 90er Jahren. Anscheinend hat Sie viel von Ihrem Appetit verloren, so dass ihre ernährungsphysiologischen Outlook ist nicht sehr vielversprechend. Dies ist besonders beunruhigend, weil sich ausreichende Ernährung umso wichtiger für Senioren. Dieser Austausch mit meiner Mutter inspiriert die folgenden zwei Rezepte.

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DHEA and women's health

Is Homewo the healthy fellow? Consulting ServicesOn iPhoneDisclaimer ad PolicyContactHome > bone and joint health, women's health > DHEA and women's HealthDHEA Womens HealthJune 23, 2010 posted by JP

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Twitter Therapy

Das Thema dieser Woche Twitter Donnerstag ist das Zusammenspiel zwischen Körper und Geist. Es gibt da draußen eine fehlerhafte Wahrnehmung, dass wir haben Körper Verwandte Gesundheitsfragen und verwandten Gesundheitsfragen - Gehirn die physiologischen und die psychologischen. Eine zunehmende Einrichtung der Forschung schlägt jedoch vor, dass wie wir unseren Körper Pflege sowohl positive als auch negative Auswirkungen auf viele Aspekte der psychischen Gesundheit und umgekehrt hat.

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Calcium Heart Controversy

Ich wurde vor kurzem gefragt, ob die Ergänzung mit Calcium das Risiko von Calcium-Einlagen in Koronararterien erhöht. Wenn die Antwort auf diese Frage "Ja" ist, könnte dann ein guter Teil der modernen Gesellschaft sein Herz-Kreislauf-System in einem Versuch zur Abwehr von Osteoporose beeinträchtigen werden. Um eine auf dem neuesten Stand und umfassend informierte Antwort auf diese Anfrage zu geben eingetaucht ich mich in einer Reihe von medizinischen Studien, die in diesem Thema untersucht haben.

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Natural Sinus Congestion Relief

Wenn Sie einer der Millionen von Menschen leiden unter chronischen Sinus Kopfschmerzen, ist die heutige Spalte für Sie. Vor einigen Wochen war meine Frau mitten in schweren Sinus Kopfschmerzen, die mehrere Tage gedauert hatte. Nichts wir versucht schien zu helfen, Ihre Nebenhöhlen überhaupt zu entwässern. Das heißt, bis Sie stieß auf ein Hausmittel im Internet, die ein Dr. Lisa DeStefano zugeschrieben wurde. Vor dem Versuch es heraus wir waren beide sehr skeptisch. Aber das änderte sich bald. Mein gesundes Montag-Tipp der Woche ist rhythmischen Druck auf Ihre Ethmoid und Pflugscharbein Knochen anwenden, um Sinus-Entwässerung zu fördern. Details folgen.

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Quinoa: The new Superfood?

by Ryan on June 21, 2010

Quinoa is healthy and now I've paired usually it lecker.Bis only as a supplement to fancy restaurants with duck, lamb or veal enjoyed.

But it turns out that quinoa can really be, the next "Superfood" can it also be very effective for losing weight (more details below).

But first, here is a short video like quinoa at home prepare:

Now if you're looking to weight lose and have to fight with other diets, quinoa be especially attractive for you.

First of all it is 100% glutenfrei.Wenn you are allergic to wheat or are an ideal replacement if you have been diagnosed gluten intolerance, quinoa.

Secondly, this South American grain is high in protein, amino acids and iron.In fact, there are 14 grams of protein for every 100-gram serving.

And thirdly, quinoa was used to control weight loss since pre-Columbian days.Incas as a "Holy grain".

In fact, it was called "one of the worldwide superfoods" by the United Nations before kurzem.Im contrary to its very popular friend from Brazil, acai berry, quinoa has no sugar and tastes still great, which makes it ideal for diabetics (or someone else trying to go back to sugar).

To learn more? then look at the quinoa Super diet.

It is the first diet of its kind uses this amazing grain to your diet, your weight loss help you hit objectives, and may even give you the slender body which have dreamed.

The quinoa Super diet is packed with health facts, dietary tips and delicious recipes that are easy to understand, easy to make and is easy to add in your daily Leben.Noch more important, could it be the "missing link" you are looking for, that help you lose weight.

Click here to learn more about the quinoa Super diet

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Quad in the AHIP interviewed

By Matthew Holt

AHIP Conference to Vegas earlier this month I contacted CEO of GCC, Tom Underwood and long-time friend of the health care blog, Gordon Norman (Al's SVP of innovation) .i asked Tom services provide support and their recent acquisition of RMD networks within the personal health.

Gordon got the big question: does disease management program really work? Tom got the simple questions about the future of the company.

June 19, 2010 Holt in conferences, disease management, Matthew

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AskDrRob (ADR): LOL, EHR, Oprah

Es hat eine sehr lange Zeit, seit ich habe ein Ask Dr. Rob-Stelle.  Es hat auch eine lange Zeit gewesen, da ich ein Spitball ein Stroh erschossen und jemand hinter dem Ohr während soziale Studien-Klasse schlagen.  Ich weiß, dass nur, weil es eine lange Zeit gewesen ist, da ich etwas getan habe, nicht es bedeutet, ist die Welt besser dran mit mir wieder zu tun.

 Dennoch gab es einige interessanten Fragen, die gekommen sind, und ich denke, ist es Zeit, die Sie beantwortet werden sollten.Sie sind beide entlang der gleichen Linie:

 Frage 1: Was ist der Unterschied zwischen Gesundheit und Gesundheitsversorgung?  Ich sehe, dass Sie dazu, die Health Care-Blog beitragen, aber Sie über Healthcare die ganze Zeit schreiben.Was das Abkommen ist? Frage 2: Was ist der Unterschied zwischen EMR und EHR?Es scheint, dass einige Leute meinen, dass es sich um vile und ungeschlachten zu nennen ist

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Do your homework: times reporters respond in Dartmouth Atlas spar

Over the weekend, the two are New York Times reporter, that the core results of the Dartmouth Atlas of health challenged their guns in a detailed response to the Rejoinder their criticism. The Dartmouth Atlas, which documents to spend regional variation in Medicare offers the intellectual, the support for assertions by health care reformer (including those in the White House), 30 percent of all health issues is wasted and not improved quality or the result of supply.

The "times original criticism (see this GoozNews post) the three most important ideas include:"

Dartmouth researchers do not fit their cards for regional differences; the Dartmouth don't fit their cards for disease researchers stress; and assertion that leads to worse results more expenditure is confirmed by the data. In some cases more spending leads to better results.

Some of these can back and forth like a quibble about language klingen.Ist it is wasted "30 percent" of health care or "up to 30 percent," as of Dartmouth researchers now see in public? Reed Abelson and Gardiner of Harris offer a link to the original 21 page response to your requests. "We think that 30 per cent estimate could be too low," wrote the Dartmouth researchers in a marked section.

On the other hand the Times reporter seem a step back the price issue.Harvard Economist originally quoted which went back to David Cutler, health care. "Cutler told you that adjust the original 2003 article by John Wennburg and Elliott Fisher of Dartmouth, who appeared in the medical literature, in fact, for the price.""But he said he agreed with the times assert that most of the atlas's, be adapted cards and rankings unlike the Group academic work in, not fully for prices," wrote Abelson and Harris.

"Cutler is its bets on the argument"30 percent is waste"in particular, now hedging.""Some believe that number is higher, and others think that it is lower," he wrote in the latest health affairs."But there is little disagreement that health care is marked by enormous waste."

I believe that the dispute over the quality, which really needs is to other researchers and werden.Beseitigung waste explores policy makers to improve quality should be.It has been always true in the making, that reduce steps and reducing waste not only costs, but it reduces the quality of the finished product improved.

There is no reason to believe it will be true in the delivery of complex services such as health care, some have compared to build and to increase that errors will occur in the process that translates in health care in more complications, additional costs and, in some cases, the likelihood the lives lost jet aircraft fliegen.Tun more than necessary the job is done.

Times reporters still by its dissection of Dartmouth data to make that actually go further expenditure for other services entstehen.Sie quality back to the original research - the two studies published in 2003 - your comment:

Researchers are wrong in saying that the results of these studies were 2003 "all in the same direction."In fact, two of the various measures of quality and mortality quoted in articles actually showing seemed that more issues could correlate to better care.

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