Pandemics and Power Notebook, II
Walter OlsonSecond in a series (first ishere):* For me, the week ’s high and low morale‐wise came on the same day in contrasting stories from stricken New York City. The high came with reports of how an estimated 500EMS crew members from around the country and their vehicles have converged on Gotham from points including Kalamazoo, Mich., Fergus Falls, Minn., and Florida to help the city handle an emergency medical call volume running far above normal. As one who ’s lived much of my life in the greater New York area and remembers similar help in the days after 9/11, it means a lot to me to...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 10, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
Gender Prejudice Is More Common In Languages With Grammatical Genders
By Emma Young
Does the language that you speak influence what you think? And do languages that assign a gender to most nouns — such as French and Spanish — lead speakers to feel differently about women versus men, compared with languages that don’t — such as Chinese? Both questions have been hotly debated. But now a major new study, involving an analysis of millions of pages of text in 45 different languages from all over the world, concludes that gendered languages shape prejudice against women.
Gendered languages, such as French and Spanish, Russian and Hindi, dictate that most nouns are male or female. For exam...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - March 11, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Gender Language Source Type: blogs
Mortality rates in the 20th Century
Regarding DQ ' s query in the comments to the previous post:Here is the record of mortality in the U.S. in the 20th Century.You can see the obvious spike in mortality in 2018, due to the influenza pandemic. Mortality during the Great Depression is choppy, but does generally seem to continue the downward trend seen before the 1918 flu pandemic, before turning down smoothly after 1940. We would not expect to see a large mortality impact in the U.S. due to WWII, as the U.S. had a total of about 400,000 combat and non-combat casualties of the war spread out over 4 years.I couldn ' t find a high quality graphic showing global 2...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 10, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
How Meditation Changes the Brain
A group of neuroscientists wanted to figure out whether years of meditation had changed the brain of an expert monk. Led by Dr. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, they connected 256 electrodes to a Tibetan monk named Matthew Ricard, who had given up a career in science and spent decades meditating in the Himalayas. Dr. Davidson and his colleagues were astonished by Ricard’s brain signature, having never seen anything like it before. The activity in his left prefrontal cortex (responsible for subduing negative emotions) and abnormal gamma wave levels (suggesting signs of bliss) led them to dub him ...
Source: World of Psychology - March 10, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Liam McClintock Tags: Brain and Behavior Mindfulness Research Meditation Neuroplasticity Neuroscience Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Heave Ho!
Leviticus 7 continues the mind numbing specifications for sacrifice. Much of it is repetitive, but it does add a new element, something called in the New International Version I present here a Fellowship Offering, which the KJV calls a Peace Offering. I ' ve looked at various translations and while it isn ' t entirely clear, it appears that in this case, the priest only gets part of the meat and the offerer gets to eat the rest, although as usual the fat, liver and kidneys are burned.What ' s really new here is what translations generally call a " wave offering, " and what is called in KJV a " heave offereing, " also in Yo...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 8, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Humana's Launches New Venture: Medicare-Centric Primary Care Clinics
Humana is expanding its primary care presence (see:Humana's Broussard calls latest primary care venture an'expensive, complicated deal'). Below is an excerpt from this article describing this new initiative:Humana's recently announced joint venture to launch senior-centric primary care clinics was far from easy or cheap....The clinics will be payer agnostic and operated by Humana ’s primary care subsidiary,Partners in Primary Care....[The company CEO] was addressing a question about the acquisition as well as Humana's deal to acquire home health care providerKindred at Home in 2018. It'...
Source: Lab Soft News - March 4, 2020 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Insurance Hospital Executive Management Population Health Public Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Okay, but why?
I warned y ' all that Leviticus is generally quite boring. We ' re now about to do chapter 5 and it ' s still specifying the rules for sacrifice. (We do get a first mention of " uncleanness, " which will be a big subject soon.) So I got to wondering; why do they have this idea that God wants them to burn parts of animals? I did a little research -- okay, I read the Wikipedia article.It turns out that animal sacrifice was very widespread in ancient Europe and the Near East -- basically the Mediterranean region cultures that are the focus of the history most of us are taught. The idea was apparently tempting enough to people...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 23, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Rust for Cheminformatics
ConclusionRust is a fast, safe language for systems development. In its current state, Rust offers the technical ingredients needed to eventually support a robust cheminformatics platform. A handful of tentative efforts using Rust in computational chemistry have appeared, but no project demonstrating the suitability of Rust for cheminformatics exists. This article takes a small step in that direction. Future articles will explore the idea further. (Source: Depth-First)
Source: Depth-First - January 21, 2020 Category: Chemistry Authors: Richard L. Apodaca Source Type: blogs
9 Pioneers Who Helped Mold the History of Psychology
The profession of psychology dates back nearly 150 years. Throughout that time, many psychologists and other professionals have made significant contributions to the field. And while most casual psychology students know primarily about experimental psychologists, other kinds of psychologists have also made their mark on the profession.
Here we walk through a few of the many hundreds of historical moments in psychology.
Many of the earliest and most famous psychologists were academics, studying the in what we now call experimental psychology. Experimental psychology is focused on the design and implementation of scientific...
Source: World of Psychology - December 25, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: John M. Grohol, Psy.D. Tags: General History of Psychology Research Source Type: blogs
Inside Schizophrenia: Treatment Strategies for Schizophrenia
Medication, Therapy, Hospitalization, Electroconvulsive Therapy- what are the treatment strategies for schizophrenia? How do you convince someone they need help? What if someone refuses treatment?
Schizophrenic Rachel Star Withers with co-host Gabe Howard reveal different treatments they have undergone over the years with various outcomes. Guest Barbara Thompson, with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, shares support options for people with schizophrenia and their family in the community.
Highlights from “Treatment Strategies for Schizophrenia” Episode
[02:00] How to bring up Schizophrenia to a loved one
...
Source: World of Psychology - December 18, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Rachel Star Withers Tags: Caregivers Inside Schizophrenia Mental Health and Wellness Podcast Psychiatry Psychology Treatment Electroconvulsive Therapy getting help Living With Schizophrenia Mental Disorder Mental Illness Support Group Treatment For Schizo Source Type: blogs
Flashcards: Hidden Powers | Episode 58
If you think you know flashcards, think again. Host Kevin Patton outlines the learning science behind flashcards, then shows how they can go way beyond simple memorization in the first of a multipart series on the hidden powers of flashcards. Updates in gene therapy to grow brain cells and smelling without olfactory bulbs.01:12 | Gene Therapy for Brain Cells04:05 | Sponsored by HAPS04:49 | Something Smells Odd08:26 | Sponsored by AAA08:45 | Introduction to Flashcards21:03 | Sponsored by HAPI Online Graduate Program21:45 | Beginning Intermediate Flashcards34:31 | Staying ConnectedIf you cannot see or activate...
Source: The A and P Professor - December 15, 2019 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Why do crabs walk sideways?
Edited straight from the Wikipedia entry on hermit crabs
As the hermit crab grows in size, it must find a larger shell and abandon the previous one. Many species form housing chains to get a new shell. When an individual crab spots a new empty shell it leaves its own shell and tries the vacant shell for size. If the shell is too big, it goes back to its own shell and waits near the vacant shell.
As new crabs arrive, they do the same forming a group of dozens of individuals, holding on to each other in a line from the largest to the smallest crab.
As soon as a crab arrives that fits the vacant shell and claims it, lea...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - November 30, 2019 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Sciencebase Source Type: blogs
A coinkydink
Today is the anniversary of the second moon landing, by Apollo 12, in 1969. The mission ' s commander was Charles " Pete " Conrad. It so happens that Conrad attended Haverford prep school in Pennsylvania and was a classmate of my father. Haverford expelled him after the 11th grade, whereupon he attended and graduated from the Darrow School in New Lebanon New York which happens to be the same school from which I graduated after being expelled from Andover.According to his Wikipedia page, Haverford expelled him because he was dyslexic and flunked his exams. According to my father, however, they expelled him because he stole ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 19, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
How to Deal with Boredom
Many people struggle with chronic boredom. But what exactly is boredom and what are some ways to move beyond it?
According to Wikipedia, “Boredom is an emotional and occasionally psychological state experienced when an individual is left without anything in particular to do, is not interested in their surroundings, or feels that a day or period is dull or tedious.” We all know the feeling. It is part of life. But sometimes it’s a symptom of something deeper that needs tending.
In my psychotherapy practice, I see a few main causes for chronic states of boredom:
Boredom which functions as a protective defense aga...
Source: World of Psychology - November 16, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Hilary Jacobs Hendel, LCSW Tags: Motivation and Inspiration Self-Help Boredom Source Type: blogs
Logical fallacies
I ' ve discussed logical fallacies before, but it seems the message doesn ' t get to some people. One of the most common categories of logical fallacy is formally calledargumentum ad hominem,orad hominem for short. There are a couple of recognized forms of this, and a slightly alternative construction calledbulverism. Essentially, the ad hominem fallacy is attacking an argument by making some assertion about its source. Trollish commenters on this blog often make the claim that an argument that supports some liberal position is not to be credited because the person making it is a liberal. Really -- I just got not one ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 13, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
