Against A Highly Regressive “Meat Tax”
Some economists want to make it more expensive for the less well-off to enjoy aclear revealed pleasure: eating red and processed meat.The average household in the poorest fifth of the income distribution dedicates 1.3 percent of spending towards it. That’s over double average household spending in the richest quintile. Yet meat is now a new “public health” target. Once, lifestyle controls stopped at smoking and drinking. They recently expanded to soda and even caffeine. Now, even the hallowe d steak is not sacred.Last week, a report by University of Oxford academics calculated supposedly “optimal tax rates”...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 12, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Ryan Bourne Source Type: blogs
The Future of Our Brains – Health in Black Mirror
Black Mirror, the iconic British anthology series asks what could happen to our identities, memories, social and personal selves, life and death after getting in touch with the digital. What could happen to the most complex and least understood human organ, the brain, being exposed to powerful, dimension-altering perception? We pondered on whether the current state of technology and research could ever take us on the dystopian, blind alley called future in Black Mirror. [SPOILER ALERT: the article contains a detailed description of episodes]
Waldo’s predictions of politics
On the day after the U.S. election, when everyo...
Source: The Medical Futurist - November 10, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Bioethics Cyborgization Future of Medicine Medical Professionals Patients avatar BCI black mirror brain brain-computer interface death digital digital avatar digital health dystopia life memory sci-fi science fiction Source Type: blogs
Episode 14: Psychological Tricks To Make Your Cooking Taste Better
This is Episode 14 of PsychCrunch, the podcast from the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, sponsored by Routledge Psychology. Download here.
http://traffic.libsyn.com/psychcrunch/20181101_PsychCrunchEp14_Mx3.mp3
Can psychology help your cooking taste better? Our presenter Ginny Smith hears about the importance of food presentation, pairing and sequencing, and how our perception of food is a multi-sensory experience. She and her friends conduct a taste test using “sonic seasonings” that you can also try at home.
Our guests, in order of appearance, are: Professor Debra Zellner at MontClaire St...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - November 7, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Eating Perception Podcast Source Type: blogs
Time to adopt Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) as a public health intervention to ease depression?
This article was originally published on Mindful, including first steps to take when feeling the blues.
Related reading:
Mindfully debunking four meditation myths
Book review: Grit is a tool in the toolbox, not the silver bullet
To harness neuroplasticity, start with enthusiasm
Six tips to build resilience and prevent brain-damaging stress (Source: SharpBrains)
Source: SharpBrains - October 15, 2018 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greater Good Magazine Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Education & Lifelong Learning Health & Wellness cognitive-therapy depression depression screening Mental-Health mindfulness mindfulness-based cognitive therapy public-health UCLA Source Type: blogs
Why Do We Forgive?
This study, the first to elucidate the cumulative effects of severe stress and forgiveness on mental health, led authors to suggest development of a more forgiving coping strategy may be beneficial in reducing stress-caused disorders and conditions.
We Choose to Forgive
Considered a forgiveness trailblazer by Time Magazine and other media, Robert D. Enright, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and president of the International Forgiveness Institute at UWMadison, is the author of Forgiveness Is a Choice: A Step-by-Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope. In this self-help book, Enrig...
Source: World of Psychology - October 6, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Suzanne Kane Tags: Ethics & Morality Family Friends Inspiration & Hope Source Type: blogs
Beyond the invisible gorilla – inattention can also render us numb and anosmic (without smell)
This study investigated touch awareness when the brain was already focusing on a touch task. But there’s evidence from earlier work that, for inattentional effects to occur, the two stimuli do not have to involve the same senses, and the new paper in Psychological Science on inattentional anosmia also finds this.
Charles Spence, head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford, and Sophie Forster at the University of Sussex, looked at the effects of performing a high vs. low attentional-load visual task on scent awareness.
Across a series of experiments, groups of participants had to repeatedly ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 30, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Cognition Perception Source Type: blogs
New findings explain why, if you ’re sensitive to alcohol, you’re probably sensitive to sleep deprivation too
This study therefore provides evidence that alcohol and sleep deprivation affect the adenosine system in very similar ways, and that personal differences in this system likely contribute to the way our sensitivity or resilience to both manifests as an individual trait (although the full picture is more complicated – sensitivity to alcohol, for example, is known to depend on a number of factors and has been linked to several genetic variations).
Though these results are important, they have several limitations. The volunteers underwent more experimental conditions than included in the key analysis of the effects of sleep...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - August 21, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Alcohol biological Brain Cognition guest blogger Sleep and dreaming Source Type: blogs
The ‘SEAHA CDT collection’ in journal Heritage Science
This blog post has been cross-posted with permission from SEAHA-CDT. The original version can be read here.
Following multiple successful publications, we are pleased to announce that SEAHA now has its own collection within journal Heritage Science; ‘The SEAHA-CDT collection’.
The SEAHA CDT collection showcases research papers produced by students studying at our Centre for Doctoral Training, Science and Engineering in Arts, Heritage and Archaeology based at UCL, University of Oxford and University of Brighton.
I see the journal Heritage Science as the ideal venue for our research output: it is interdisciplinary, ...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - August 10, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: Davy Falkner Tags: Open Access Publishing SpringerOpen Source Type: blogs
Who Cares About the Doctor-Patient Relationship? A Review of “ Next In Line: Lowered Care Expectations in the Age of Retail- and Value-Based Health ”
By KIP SULLIVAN, JD
A mere two decades ago, the headlines were filled with stories about the “HMO backlash.” HMOs (which in the popular media meant most insurance companies) were the subject of cartoons, the butt of jokes by comedians, and the target of numerous critical stories in the media. They were even the bad guys in some movies and novels. Some defenders of the insurance industry claimed the cause of the backlash was the negative publicity and doctors whispering falsehoods about managed care into the ears of their patients. That was nonsense. The industry had itself to blame.
The primary cause of the backlash w...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 30, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Patients Physicians care advocates Next In Line: Lowered Care Expectations in the Age of Retail- and Value-Based Health patient-provider relationship Value-Based Payment Source Type: blogs
Podcast: The Stanford Prison Non-Experiment
For decades, students have been taught about the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which volunteers were assigned as either “prisoners” or “guards” in a mock prison. The “guards” in this scenario allegedly became abusive and controlling toward the “prisoners,” thus it was concluded that average people, given power and control, would turn to such negative behavior. But was this a legitimate experiment? New evidence reveals that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than was originally reported. Listen as we discuss the origin of the experiment, the controversy surrounding it, and what (if anything...
Source: World of Psychology - July 19, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: The Psych Central Show Tags: General Psychology The Psych Central Show Violence and Aggression Gabe Howard Stanford Prison Experiment Vincent M. Wales Source Type: blogs
Parental Rights, Best Interests and Significant Harms: A Comparative Perspective on Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Children
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS - Parental Rights, Best Interests and Significant Harms: A Comparative Perspective on Medical Decision-Making on Behalf of Children
This collection has been inspired by the decision of the Court of Appeal in Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates [2017] (the “Charlie Gard case”) and the case of Alfie Evans (Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust v Evans and James [2018] EWHC 308 (Fam)).
In these cases, the English courts affirmed the best interests test as both the basis for judicial intervention in parental decision-making in medical matters and the test to be applied i...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - July 14, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Thaddeus Mason Pope, JD, PhD Tags: Health Care syndicated Source Type: blogs
Trial By Error: My Exchange With Professor Bishop
By David Tuller, DrPH I recently wrote to Oxford University neuropsychologist Dorothy Bishop, who had provided a statement to the Science Media Centre about the Lightning Process study. Although she had expressed concerns about the pseudo-scientific nature of the intervention, she found it to be generally well conducted and noted that the findings appeared to […] (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - June 26, 2018 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
The Neuroscience of Pain | The New Yorker
On a foggy February morning in Oxford, England, I arrived at the John Radcliffe Hospital, a shiplike nineteen-seventies complex moored on a hill east of the city center, for the express purpose of being hurt. I had an appointment with a scientist named Irene Tracey, a brisk woman in her early fifties who directs Oxford University's Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences and has become known as the Queen of Pain."We might have a problem with you being a ginger," she warned when we met. Redheads typically perceive pain differently from those with other hair colors; many also flinch at the use of the G-wo...
Source: Psychology of Pain - June 25, 2018 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs
Tropical Travel Trouble 008 Total TB Extravaganza
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka Tropical Travel Trouble 008
Peer Reviewer Dr McBride ID physician, Wisconsin
TB affects 1/3rd of the population and one patient dies every 20 seconds from TB. Without treatment 50% of pulmonary TB patients will be dead in 5 years. In low to middle income countries both TB and HIV can be ubiquitous, poor compliance can lead to drug resistance and malnourished infants are highly susceptible. TB can be very complex and this post will hopefully give you the backbone to TB m...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - June 16, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine Genexpert meningitis TB TB meningitis Tuberculosis Source Type: blogs
