To you, that angry, horn-blasting tailgater is suffering from road rage. But doctors have another name for it - intermittent explosive disorder - and a new study suggests it is far more common than they realized, affecting up to 16 million Americans. ‘People think it’s bad behavior and that you just need an attitude adjustment, but what they don’t know … is that there’s a biology and cognitive science to this,’ said Dr. Emil Coccaro, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Chicago’s medical school. Road rage, temper outbursts that involve throwing or breaking objects and even spousal abuse can sometimes be attributed to the disorder, though not everyone who does those things is afflicted. By definition, intermittent explosive disorder involves multiple outbursts that are way out of proportion to the situation. These angry outbursts often include threats or aggressive actions and property damage. The disorder typically first appears in adolescence; in the study, the average age of onset was 14. The study was based on a national face-to-face survey of 9,282 U.S. adults who answered diagnostic questionnaires in 2001-03. It was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. About 5 percent to 7 […]
A star twinkles for eons, then suddenly shines brighter than any other heavenly object save the sun and moon. It’s a supernova, the titanic explosion of a great star somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. The show in the sky can last for days or weeks. One such stellar event, recorded around the globe in 1006, is thought to have been recorded in Arizona by an ancient Hohokam stargazer who depicted the event in rock art, said two astronomers, John Barentine of Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico and Gilbert A. Esquerdo, research assistant with the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson. The two scientists presented their theory at the American Astronomical Society meeting this week in Calgary, Alberta. ‘The supernova of 1006 was perhaps the brightest such event visible from Earth for thousands of years, reaching the brightness of a quarter moon at peak,’ Barentine explained. The discovery, if confirmed, shows that those here then were aware of changes in the night sky and commemorated them in a cultural record. The rock art, or petroglyph, on a 2-foot-by-18-inch rock, is produced by chiseling an image into a stone with another stone, Barentine said in […]
Stepping into a research area marked by controversy and fraud, Harvard University scientists said Tuesday they are trying to clone human embryos to create stem cells they hope can be used one day to help conquer a host of diseases. ‘We are convinced that work with embryonic stem cells holds enormous promise,’ said Harvard provost Dr. Steven Hyman. The privately funded work is aimed at devising treatments for such ailments as diabetes, Lou Gehrig’s disease, sickle-cell anemia and leukemia. Harvard is only the second American university to announce its venture into the challenging, politically charged research field. The University of California, San Francisco, began efforts at embryo cloning a few years ago, only to lose a top scientist to England. It has since resumed its work but is not as far along as experiments already under way by the Harvard group. A company, Advanced Cell Technology Inc. of Alameda, Calif., is trying to restart its embryo cloning efforts. And British scientists said last year that they had cloned a human embryo, though without extracting stem cells. Scientists have long held out the hope of ‘therapeutic cloning’ against diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord […]
LONDON — The world’s deserts are under threat as never before, with global warming making lack of water an even bigger problem for the parched regions, says a UN report released Monday. The first comprehensive look at deserts round the world said these areas, their wildlife and, most of all, their scarce water supplies are facing dramatic changes. ‘Deserts are the last great wildernesses and the Cinderellas of the conservation world – out of sight, out of mind,’ said Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program. ‘Everybody cares about the mountains. Everybody is worried about the oceans. … But nobody has really thought about the deserts before. They need help.’ Desert areas make up almost one-quarter of Earth’s surface – 33 million square kilometres – and are home to some 500 million people, more than previously thought. Most of the 12 desert regions whose future climate was studied face a drier future, the report said. Experts predicted that rainfall would drop as much as 20 per cent by the end of the century because of human-induced climate change. Compounding the threat is the melting of glaciers. A large portion of water used […]
Consumer Reports has new advice for pregnant women concerning tuna fish. The consumer organization’s analysis of the latest government data on mercury contamination reveals that light tuna, which usually has lower levels of mercury than chunk albacore, can sometimes have higher levels. Given this latest information on light tuna, Consumer Reports thinks it’s prudent for pregnant women to avoid canned tuna entirely. Exposure to mercury from fish can result in small but measurable impairments in the neurological system, including such problems like eye-hand coordination and learning ability. Consumer Reports also has recommendations for how much tuna young children should eat. It depends on their weight. Children under the weight of about 45 pounds can safely eat a half to a whole six-ounce can of chunk light tuna per week. Or they can eat up to a third of a can of albacore. Consumer Reports says there are other types of seafood women of childbearing age and young children should avoid eating because of high levels of mercury contamination. They are swordfish, shark, tile fish, and king mackerel. However, Consumer Reports says there’s a variety of seafood that can safely be eaten by young children and […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
