Paranoia is far more pervasive in the general population than anyone was willing to admit, a new study finds. Mumbling and furtive glances seem to be everywhere. In our daily interactions with others, we pick up on facial and other cues that help us judge whether or not to trust another person. These judgments, however, are error-prone and can lead to exaggerated or unfounded fears about threats from others. These paranoid thoughts can range from thinking strangers are looking at you critically, or that others are spreading nasty rumors about you, to the feeling that others are deliberately trying to harm you in some way. ‘Paranoid thoughts are often triggered by ambiguous events, such as people looking in one’s direction or hearing laughter in a room,’ said lead researcher Daniel Freeman, Wellcome Trust researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. This phenomenon can be tricky to study, Freeman said, because it’s difficult to recreate such social interactions in the lab. ‘Virtual reality allows us to do just that, to look at how different people interpret exactly the same social situation,’ he said. Freeman and his colleagues equipped 200 volunteers with virtual reality headsets. […]
Botulinum neurotoxin type A, sold as Allergan Inc.’s Botox remedy for wrinkles, can move from its injection site to the brain, a study shows. Scientists injected rats’ whisker muscles with botulism toxin. Tests of the rodents’ brain tissue found that botulism had been transported to the brain stems, the researchers said in the Journal of Neuroscience published April 2. Botox is Allergan’s biggest product, with $1.21 billion in sales last year. The drug, approved in 1989, became fashionable among aging celebrities seeking to smooth facial wrinkles and is used to treat some neurological disorders. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating whether patients contracted botulism, a muscle-weakening illness, from Botox and Myobloc, a product from Solstice Neurosciences Inc. ‘The idea that there could be some transmission of this to the central nervous system needs to be followed up,” said Mathew Avram, the director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Dermatology, Laser and Cosmetic Center, in Boston, in a telephone interview today. “But this treatment has been used on millions of people for years, and we’re not seeing major central nervous system uses with it.” Botulism neurotoxin can disrupt nerve cells’ ability to communicate and may change spinal […]
WASHINGTON — The notion that guzzling glasses of water to flood yourself with good health is all wet, researchers said on Wednesday. Dr. Stanley Goldfarb and Dr. Dan Negoianu of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia reviewed the scientific literature on the health effects of drinking lots of water. People in hot, dry climates and athletes have an increased need for water, and people with certain diseases do better with increased fluid intake, they found. But for average healthy people, more water does not seem to mean better health, they said. Their scientific review, published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, is the latest to undercut the recommendations advanced by some experts to drink eight glasses of 8 ounces (225 ml) of water a day. Dr. Heinz Valtin of Dartmouth Medical School in 2002 also put those recommendations to the test, finding them to be more urban myth than medical dogma and lacking in scientific basis. Goldfarb and Negoianu examined what Goldfarb called ‘four major myths’ regarding claims of a benefit for extra water drinking: that it leads to more toxin excretion, improves skin tone, makes one less hungry and reduces headache […]
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration was caught off-guard by the first Iraqi-led military offensive since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a weeklong thrust in southern Iraq whose paltry results have silenced talk at the Pentagon of further U.S. troop withdrawals any time soon. President Bush last week declared the offensive, which ended Sunday, ‘a defining moment’ in Iraq’s history. That may prove to be true, but in recent days senior U.S. officials have backed away from the operation, which ended with Shiite militias still in place in Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki possibly weakened and a de facto cease-fire brokered by an Iranian general. ‘There is no empirical evidence that the Iraqi forces can stand up’ on their own, a senior U.S. military official in Washington said, reflecting the frustration of some at the Pentagon. He and other military officials requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak for the record. Having Iraqi forces take a leadership role in combating militias and Islamic extremists was crucial to U.S. hopes of withdrawing more American forces in Iraq and reducing the severe strains the Iraq war has put on the Army and Marine Corps. The […]
Three out of 10 US public school students do not graduate from high school, and major city school districts only graduate one out of two students, according to a study released Tuesday. In a report on graduation rates around the country, the EPE Research Center and the America Promise Alliance also showed that the high school graduation rate — finishing 12 grades of school — in big cities falls to as low as just 34.6 percent in Baltimore, Maryland, and barely over 40 percent for the troubled Ohio cities of Columbus and Cleveland. And it said that black and native American student’s have effectively a one-in-two chance of getting a high school diploma. ‘Our analysis finds that graduating from high school in America’s largest cities amounts, essentially, to a coin toss,’ the study said. ‘Only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the principal school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma.’ Based on 2003-2004 data, the report said that across the country the graduation average for public school students is 69.9 percent, with the best success rate in suburbs — 74.9 percent — and rural districts — 73.2 percent. […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
