Sunday, January 8th, 2012
ANDREW JONES, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The business of names I think is a big deal. I once had a friend named Alvin and he felt his name had cursed him all his life, and I knew an older woman -- at the time I was young -- whose name was Beula and she felt the same. In both cases it was a family name, and to the young parents who had bestowed it it honored some forebear and seemed a good idea at the time. It wasn't.
Future parents may want to be careful naming their children after a new study revealed a poor first name could have major consequences.
According to research published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, data from 12,000 adults revealed that an unfortunate name could make a person feel lonelier and less intelligent.
Scientists determined the results by using two different methods. One included sending out 47,000 emails to German online daters without photos, while the other method gave people the same location and age but different names to determine who they wanted to date.
Names such as Charlotte or Alexander, carrying the highest valence – or intrinsic attractiveness – received 102 percent more pages views than those with the lowest valence such as Kevin or Mandy.
The two experiments on Europe’s dating website revealed that among the 12,000 people tested, a majority would rather be single than with a poorly named lover.
Other studies revealed that a lackluster first name could not only lead to lower self-esteem, but also contribute to being less educated and more prone to consider smoking.
‘These things can’t only be triggered by having a good or bad name, but having a good or bad name does have a small influence,
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Sunday, January 8th, 2012
BRIAN VASTAG, - The Washington Post
Stephan: If you are an older man this is important information you should discuss with your physician.
Find prostate cancer early, save a life.
That message has been pervasive since 1986, when a blood test for prostate cancer first hit the market. But more evidence suggests that, in many or even most cases, the message is wrong.
The latest blow against prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing came Friday from a large, long-term study that found routine testing in men ages 55 to 74 did not prevent deaths from prostate cancer.
‘The message is that routine mass screening is not the way to go,
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Saturday, January 7th, 2012
BRUCE E. LEVINE, - AlterNet
Stephan: Have you ever thought of yourself as a lab rat? You should because in the American healthcare system you are. Here is a report from inside the system.
Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green, 2011).
Why do some of us become dissident mental health professionals?
The majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals ‘go along to get along
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Saturday, January 7th, 2012
IAN SAMPLE, Science Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is yet another example of human hubris. How selective our morality is. We are against love unless it comes packaged one man one woman. Yet, the manipulation of life forms which holds profound implications for our world and wellbeing is barely discussed.
The world’s first monkeys to be created from the embryos of several individuals have been born at a US research centre.
Scientists at the Oregon National Primate Research Centre produced the animals, known as chimeras, by sticking together between three and six rhesus monkey embryos in the early stages of their development.
Three animals were born at the laboratory, a singleton and twins, and were said to be healthy, with no apparent birth defects following the controversial technique.
The chimeras have tissues and organs made up of cells that come from each of the contributing embryos. The mixtures of cells carried up to six distinct genomes.
‘The cells never fuse, but they stay together and work together to form tissues and organs,’ said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who led the research. ‘The possibilities for science are enormous.’
Scientists named the singleton Chimero, and the twins Roku and Hex, meaning six in Japanese and Greek. Hex was born after merging six individual embryos, according to a report in the journal Cell. ‘To our knowledge, these infants are the world’s first primate chimeras,’ the authors write.
While all three monkeys are biologically male, blood tests revealed that Roku carried both male and female cells.
The first chimeric animals were created by […]
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Saturday, January 7th, 2012
Stephan: Just as scientists are creating GMO plants, so our culture is now creating monster species of insects. And should these insects get free, as they inevitably will somehow, then what?
Nightmarish ‘supersoldier’ ants with huge heads and jaws have been created by activating ancient genes.
Scientists believe the monster ants may be a genetic throwback to an ancestor that lived millions of years ago.
Scientists say they can create the supersoldiers at will by dabbing normal ant larvae with a special hormone – the larvae then develop into supersoldiers rather than normal soldier or worker ants.
A supersoldier next to a normal ant: Scientists say they can create the supersoldiers at will by dabbing normal ant larvae with a special hormone – the larvae then develop into supersoldiers rather than normal soldier or worker ants.
Supersoldier ants can occur naturally in the wild, but only rarely. In the deserts of America and Mexico, their job is to protect the colony from raids by invading army ants.
The supersoldiers use their enormous heads to block the nest entrance and attack any enemy ants that get too close.
Scientists showed that ordinary ants of the species Pheidole morrisi contain all the genetic ‘tools’ needed to turn them into supersoldiers – they just need a hormonal push.
The research is reported today in the journal Science.
Scientists created the monster ants in the laboratory by activating ancient ancestral genes
Authors Dr […]
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