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You've Got TOO much e-mail

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:06:31 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

It happened with cigarettes. It happened with red meat. And carbs. And SUVs.

And now it's happening with e-mail. The preferred communication channel of millions of Americans is no longer cool.

The problem has become so severe that a new crop of entrepreneurs has sprung up with antidotes -- which sometimes involve creating more e-mail.

"It chases you," says Natalie Firstenberg, a Los Angeles therapist who says the subject of e-mail has been coming up more and more in sessions with her clients. "There are no business hours."

E-mail backlash started in earnest last year with "no e-mail" Fridays at companies such as Intel, U.S. Cellular and Deloitte & Touche. But popular opinion has it that this turned out to be not much more than a Band-Aid.

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

We experience fewer visits, fewer telephone calls, fewer contacts all around -- except e-mail. We're subsisting on this diet of snippets and glimpses of each other socially."

Tags: thank, god, my, boss, doesn't, have, internet

Experts: Internet Addiction Growing

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:14:43 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.redorbit.com

The author of a book on Internet addiction says that 5 to 10 percent of the U.S. population is hooked with larger percentages in other countries addicted.

Kimberly Young, clinical director of the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, told Medill News Service that many addicts are hooked on one particular aspect of the Internet. The major ones include online gambling and gaming, sex sites, compulsive surfers and even addiction to eBay.

Coleen Moore of the Illinois Center for Addiction Recovery said that she has seen young adults who spend 14 to 18 hours a day at their computers. At that point, the Internet is keeping them from work, family life and friendships outside the virtual world.

Young compared the Internet to alcohol. Many people can use it and then turn to something else but some lose control. She said that treatment is in its early stages, depending on therapy.

Tags: net, addiction

How the Brain Reacts to Addictive Substances

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:17:59 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

Brain Response to Addictive Substances

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

A new research finding gives scientists insight on how brain cells process antidepressant drugs, cocaine and amphetamines.

The novel discovery could prove useful in the development of more targeted medication therapies for a host of psychiatric diseases, most notably in the area of addiction.

In the article, researchers describe the precise molecular and biochemical structure of drug targets known as neurotransmitter-sodium symporters (NSSs), and how cells use them to enable neural signaling in the brain.

The main surprise was the realization that two binding sites on the transporter molecule need to be filled simultaneously and cooperate in order for transport to be driven across the cell membrane. For these studies, the scientists used the crystal structure of a bacterial transporter that is very similar to human neurotransmitter transporters.

Tags: substance abuse

'World's oldest joke' traced back to 1900 BC

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:47:56 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: History can make you smile.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

The world's oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and suggests toilet humour was as popular with the ancients as it is today, British academics say.

The joke is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq, and goes: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

It heads the world's Oldest Top 10 joke list published by the University of Wolverhampton.

A 1600 BC gag about a pharaoh, said to be King Snofru, comes second. "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish."

The oldest British joke dates back to the 10th century and reveals the bawdy face of the Anglo-Saxons. "What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? A key."

Tags: wherever, you, be, let, your, wind, flow, free

Is There a Laziness Gene?

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:59:57 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.time.com

Have you ever wondered why you can't get off the couch and exercise — despite paying for an expensive gym membership, despite your New Year's resolutions, even despite the doctor's scolding at your last check-up? Turns out that your inertia may be coded right into your genes.

Based on some intriguing, preliminary studies in animals, J. Timothy Lightfoot, a kinesiologist, and his team at University of North Carolina, Charlotte, suggest that genetics may indeed predispose some of us for sloth. Using mice specially bred and selected according to their activity levels, Lightfoot identified 20 different genomic locations that work in tandem to influence activity levels in mice — specifically, how far the animals will run

genes may affect either the way muscles work — perhaps causing them to use energy more efficiently and preventing fatigue — or some higher-order biochemical circuit in the brain, such as levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine or serotonin

Tags: laziness, genetics

Please Help Scientists By Participating In National Orgasm Day July 31st

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:05:04 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: So, Britain, privatize your National Health Services and cut the welfare - tell those people in Manchester the steel industry is never coming back so they should get other jobs. Then you could put money toward science studies that really count, like this.

After all, this is not a gender-specific issue. Having British women famous for lack of orgasms really doesn't make the men there look all that great either.

Clip Source: www.scientificblogging.com

I'm taking a moment away from crafting "Journey To The Center Of The Uterus", my opus on reproduction and culture, to discuss something of equal import - namely, orgasms.

It will shock you to know this, but nearly 50% of British women don't have orgasms. Are they frigid? No, not at all, as my 1999 layover at Heathrow can attest. Science funding is the issue, as we shall see.

As we have discussed in articles like The Science of Orgasms and Would Female Orgasms Kill Men?, (1) orgasms are tricky business but scientists know what they are doing. Fewer scientists means fewer orgasms. Britain is in the throes of a science funding meltdown so the problem for British women will only get worse. With fewer scientists there can be fewer studies on important stuff like this.

What are we talking about?

To celebrate National Orgasm Day on July 31, concerned groups in the UK have been conducting a survey on female orgasms - and the results are not good

Tags: humor, britain

Nobody's Copyright

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:41:35 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Let’s see what some wise people, spiritual teachers, say about copyright. U. G. Krishnamurti, the controversial teacher/non-teacher, expressed it this way.

My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody (U. G. Krishnamurti, The Mystique of Enlightenment, India. Dinesh Vaghela. Goa. 1982: http://www.well.com/user/jct/mystiq.htm)

Clip Source: www.indranet.org

The debate about copyright is one of the most heated on the Internet. Record labels, movie distributors, publishers, news agencies, bloggers and users are involved in a discussion which at times gets aggressive.

It seems that virtually everything on the Net is eventually copied, aggregated, cut, pasted and homogenized. There are various sites which aggregate articles by collecting everything being produced by blogs.

Every intellectual production is being absorbed by the collective sphere and somehow becomes depersonalized from the original author.

The hyperproduction of information and knowledge by hundreds of millions of people at the same time creates a whirl where individual identities and sources of information become out of focus and, like the rotation pinwheel of colors, creates a single white color from which it is difficult to trace the original color.

Tags: web, copyrights, intellectual properties

Are You REALLY A Woman?

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:32:38 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "The tests never unmasked a man posing as a woman, but they did turn up several athletes who were born with genetic defects that made them appear — according to lab results, at least — to be men. In 1967, the Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska was barred from the sport because she failed the chromosomal test, even though she had passed the nude test a year earlier. In the 1980s, the Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez Patino was disqualified because the test revealed, to her surprise, that she was born with a Y chromosome. Her eligibility was reinstated in 1988.
The practice came under increasing criticism in the 1990s by doctors, scientists and athletes who argued that the tests were not just invasive, but were also bad science."

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

By the time they arrive in Beijing, most athletes have resigned themselves to the possibility of undergoing a battery of tests for banned substances, like anabolic steroids and certain cough medicines.

But some female athletes may find they are asked to submit to an entirely different examination — one that will test whether they are, in fact, women.

Some medical ethicists have said the practice is too intrusive. “Real people are going to be hurt by this,” said Alice Dreger, an associate professor in medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University.

“Real Olympic athletes who have spent their whole life waiting for this moment.”

At first, women were asked to parade nude before a panel of doctors to verify their sex. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, officials switched to a chromosomal test.

The Energy Technology Revolution

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:13:14 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: Tom Friedman is so right (shocker) about this. I find it to be insane that this is not THE ISSUE of the presidential election. T. Boone Pickens gets it. Tom Friedman gets it. Europe and Asia seem to get it. When will Washington get it???

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Anyone who looks at the growth of middle classes around the world and their rising demands for natural resources, plus the dangers of climate change driven by our addiction to fossil fuels, can see that clean renewable energy — wind, solar, nuclear and stuff we haven’t yet invented — is going to be the next great global industry. It has to be if we are going to grow in a stable way.

Therefore, the country that most owns the clean power industry is going to most own the next great technology breakthrough — the E.T. revolution, the energy technology revolution — and create millions of jobs and thousands of new businesses, just like the I.T. revolution did.

Tags: alternative energy, solar, wind, green energy, tom friedman

Toward a Type 1 civilization

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:59:25 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Along with energy policy, political and economic systems must also evolve.
Michael Shermer, one of the most trusted voices in todays world.

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

By Michael Shermer
July 22, 2008

Our civilization is fast approaching a tipping point. Humans will need to make the transition from nonrenewable fossil fuels as the primary source of our energy to renewable energy sources that will allow us to flourish into the future. Failure to make that transformation will doom us to the endless political machinations and economic conflicts that have plagued civilization for the last half-millennium.

We need new technologies to be sure, but without evolved political and economic systems, we cannot become what we must. And what is that? A Type 1 civilization. Let me explain.

Type 1 can harness all of the energy of its home planet; Type 2 can harvest all of the power of its sun; and Type 3 can master the energy from its entire galaxy.

Based on our energy efficiency at the time, in 1973 the astronomer Carl Sagan estimated that Earth represented a Type 0.7 civilization on a Type 0 to Type 1 scale. (More current assessments put us at 0.72.)

Tags: michael shermer, civilization, transformation

Diamonds are forever...

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:03:09 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: A new sense as to why life as we see it, is so rich..

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Diamonds May Have Been Life's Best Friend On Primordial Earth

scientists have theorized for years that the chemical precursors of life gradually evolved from a so-called "primordial soup" of simpler molecules.

But the details of how these simpler amino acids molecules, the building blocks of life, were assembled into complex polymers, remains one of science's long-standing mysteries.

research team studied diamonds, crystallized forms of carbon which are older than the earliest forms of life on Earth.

after treatment with hydrogen, natural diamond forms crystalline layers of water on its surface, essential for the development of life, and involved in electrical conductivity. When primitive molecules landed on the surface of these hydrogenated diamonds in the atmosphere of early Earth, the resulting reaction may have been sufficient enough to generate more complex organic molecules that eventually gave rise to life, researchers say.

Tags: biology, evolution, diamonds

Europe, Japan join forces to map out future of intelligent robots

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:19:42 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

The field of robotics could be poised for a breakthrough, leading to a new generation of intelligent machines capable of taking on multiple tasks and moving out of the factory into the home and general workplace. The great success of robots so far has been in automating repetitive tasks in process control and assembly, yielding dramatic cuts in production, but the next step towards cognition and more human-like behaviour has proved elusive.

It has been difficult to make robots that can truly learn and adapt to unexpected situations in the way humans can, while it has been equally challenging trying to develop a machine capable of moving smoothly like any animal. There is still no robot capable of walking properly without jerky slightly unbalanced movements.

The future of cognitive robotics lies in combining the techniques discussed at the ESF/JSPS conference to develop true humanoid machines capable of assisting in homes, offices, and public places

Tags: europe, japan, future, intelligent, robots

Alzheimer's breakthrough

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:01:18 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

The Alzheimer's Society last night hailed an apparent breakthrough in the treatment of dementia by scientists at Aberdeen University. A team led by Professor Claude Wischik published results of early trials of a new drug, suggesting it could be at least twice as effective as current medicines in slowing progression of the disease.

The drug, called rember, slowed cognitive decline by 81%, Wischik said in a paper presented to the international conference on Alzheimer's disease in Chicago.

Rember is the first drug to act on a protein called tau that helps brain cells keep their structure and communicate with each other. In people with dementia this protein becomes tangled and causes brain cell death. Wischik's research suggested rember could reduce the tau tangles and slow the deterioration of the brain.

People taking it for 50 weeks had a slower decline in blood flow to the parts of the brain that are important for memory than those taking a dummy pill.