March 2, 2010
Category: Psychiatry • Public Health • Social Issues
The January 2010
American Journal of Psychiatry has two
articles pertaining to the relationship between dietary practices and
mental health. One article presents the results of a study; the
other is an editorial.
Association
of Western and Traditional Diets With Depression and Anxiety in Women
Jacka et al.
Am J Psychiatry 2010; 167:305-311 (published online January 4, 2010;
doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09060881) © 2010 American Psychiatric
Association
Read on »
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:22 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 21, 2010
Category: Armchair Musings • Photos of Interest
James Gunn, the director for the movie
Slither,
seems to be enthralled by creepy crawly things. He also has a
blog-like website, on which he posted
Evolution
Fucked Your Shit Up: The World's 50 Freakiest Animals. (HT:
Interesting
Pile.)
The creature pictured above, by the way, is
an ajolote. The term
ajolote can refer to either the
Axolotl an (aquatic salamander (genus
Ambystoma),
or it can refer to the
Mexican mole
lizard (
Bipes biporus). The one in the picture is the
lizard,
Bipes biporus.
I am not going to say any more about the vexations of taxonomy, or even
about Mr. Gunn. The photos are kind of neat, but they speak for
themselves. What I am going to address is the notion that
evolution messed these creatures up. I suspect that Mr. Gunn was
not intending to make a scientifically verifiable statement. But
it is way off base, and it illustrates a fundamental misconception
about evolution.
Read on »
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:03 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 14, 2010
Category: Armchair Musings
Sometimes I see sad-looking plants on clearance, buy them, and try to
heal them. This activity provides me with a gratification that is
similar to that which comes from healing sad-looking people, but
without the tribulations that occur if it does not work as well as we
had hoped.
I even have some of these plants in my office (although none of the
worse cases go there). At stressful times, I may go and look at
the parts of the plants that are growing well: apical meristems, leaf
primodia, and axillary buds -- or green shoots, in the vernacular of
our time. I just look at them. I don't actually
do
anything, at least anything that is outwardly visible, most of the
time.
Read on »
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:54 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 10, 2010
Category: Psychiatry
The American Psychiatric Association has
gone public with the
details
of their proposed revisions to their
Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual. As expected, most of this is bland and not worthy of
attention from the general public.
Unfortunately, as
Benedict
Carey points out, the book often is used for purposes other than
those for which it is intended, which can lead to unintended
consequences. It remains to be seen what these will be.
I'm just going to make some quick, admittedly superficial
comments.
First, I wince at the new category for autism:
Autism
Spectrum Disorder:
Read on »
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:46 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 1, 2010
Category: Neuroscience • Psychiatry
Objective diagnosis is in some
ways the holy grail of medicine. It has been maddeningly elusive
in psychiatry. Now comes a paper in which the authors suggest
that they may have found this treasure.
The paper details a method of using magnetoencephalography to assess
human brain function. They claim that, in a select population, it
can correctly identify patients with PTSD with 90% accuracy.
The
synchronous neural interactions test as a functional neuromarker for
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a robust classification
method based on the bootstrap
A P Georgopoulos et
al 2010 J. Neural Eng. 7 016011
Abstract. Traumatic experiences can produce
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which is a debilitating condition
and for which no biomarker currently exists (Institute of Medicine (US)
2006 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Diagnosis and Assessment
(Washington, DC: National Academies)). Here we show that the
synchronous neural interactions (SNI) test which assesses the
functional interactions among neural populations derived from
magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings (Georgopoulos A P et al 2007
J. Neural Eng. 4 349-55) can successfully differentiate PTSD patients
from healthy control subjects. Externally cross-validated,
bootstrap-based analyses yielded >90% overall accuracy of
classification. In addition, all but one of 18 patients who were not
receiving medications for their disease were correctly classified.
Altogether, these findings document robust differences in brain
function between the PTSD and control groups that can be used for
differential diagnosis and which possess the potential for assessing
and monitoring disease progression and effects of therapy.
The synchronous neural interactions test is a test that is done by
having persons perform a simple task, while the magnetic signals from
their brain are being measured. The process is called
magnetoencephalography.
The resulting record is called a magnetoencephalogram (MEG). It
is similar to an electroencephalogram (EEG). The difference is
that the EEG measures small electric currents. The MEG measures
magnetic impulses. These impulses are only slightly affected by
the intervening tissue (skull, skin, etc). Therefore, it is
possible to get readings that are more precise. The downside is
that it requires a more elaborate device, and a special,
magnetically-shielded, room. Very few of these devices exist.
Read on »
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:08 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 30, 2010
Category: Computing
I decided to try using Google Chrome as a web browser. The reason is that it is supposed to be faster, particularly for sites that make heavy use of Flash. It turns out that installing it is a hassle if you do it the obvious way, because Flash does not work without fiddling around. That sort of defeats the purpose.
The easier way is to use the one-click install at:
http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/ope...2/chromium.ymp.
This adds the necessary repositories, downloads the application, and configures it so that flash works right away.
It seems to work pretty well. It remains to be seen, however, if Chrome has any chance of becoming my main browser. After all, the first browser I used was
NCSA Mosaic, which morphed into Netscape Navigator, which went through several iterations, then became the basis for Firefox. I just followed along. After 17 years, it might be hard to change.
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:31 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 25, 2010
Category: Medicine • Social Issues
I saw this headline on Google Fast Flip, and had to read it. I'm
always game for an anti-big-pharma story: even though I appreciate
their efforts to relieve suffering, I do like to take notice of their
shadier practices.
Is
Glaxo's Charity Really Theft?
Jan 20 2010, 5:30 pm
by Daniel Indiviglio
Is there a fine line? Corporations have a duty to shareholders to
maximize profits. But when they donate to charity -- which is regularly
done these days, often through foundations -- this takes money out of
shareholders' hands or stifles future growth. It instead provides that
money to some cause that management deems appropriate. But Glaxo-SmithKline's
recent decision to put thousands of chemical compounds which may cure
malaria into the public domain gives this question a new dimension,
adding additional complexity...
The story does not go where I expected. It is not talking about
some kind of charity scam, in which they get PR karma for doing
something that really only benefits themselves. Rather, the story
is about the fact that Glaxo is releasing some of the compounds it has
developed, into the public domain.
Indiviglio's story is posted on the
Atlantic business
blog. It is based upon an article in the (UK)
Guardian.
The
Guardian version is reasonably thoughtful, whereas the
Atlantic
version is frankly offensive.
Read on »
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:23 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 19, 2010
Category: Armchair Musings • Environment • economy
Susanne Sternthal, a writer based in Moscow, has published an article
about the ecology of stray dogs. The article is in
Financial
Times, of all places. Why is that?
Moscow's
stray dogs
By Susanne Sternthal
January 16 2010 00:04
Read on »
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:17 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 18, 2010
Category: Neuroscience • Psychiatry • Science in the Media
I've been mulling this over for a few days, finally deciding to write
about it. There was an article in the NYT on 13 January 2010
about an NEJM article:
Morphine
May Help Traumatic Stress
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: January 13, 2010
Read on »
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:39 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
