TODAY மே 31

நிகழ்வுகள்

1223 - செங்க்கிஸ் கானின் மங்கோலியப் படைகள் கிப்சாக்கியரை சமரில் தோற்கடித்தனர்.
1889 - பென்சில்வேனியாவில் ஜோன்ஸ்டவுன் நகரில் அணைக்கட்டு ஒன்று உடைந்ததில் 2,200 பேர் கொல்லப்பட்டனர்.
1900 - பிரித்தானியப் படைகள் ரொபேர்ட் பிரபு தலைமையில் ஜோகார்னஸ்பேக் நகரைக் கைப்பற்றின.
1902 - தென்னாபிரிக்காவில் இரண்டாவது போவர் போர் முடிவுற்றது. தென்னாபிரிக்கா பிரித்தானியாவின் முழுமையான ஆட்சியின் கீழ் வந்தது.
1910 - தென்னாபிரிக்க ஒன்றியம் அமைக்கப்பட்டது.
1911 - டைட்டானிக் கப்பல் வெள்ளோட்டம் விடப்பட்டது.
1921 - ஐக்கிய அமெரிக்காவில் ஓக்லஹோமா, துல்சா என்ற இடத்தில் இடம்பெற்ற இனக்கலவரங்களின் போது 39 பேர் கொல்லப்பட்டனர்.
1931 - பாகிஸ்தானின் குவெட்டா என்ற இடத்தில் இடம்பெற்ற நிலநடுக்கத்தில் 40,000 பேர் கொல்லப்பட்டனர்.
1942 - இரண்டாம் உலகப் போர்: ஜப்பானிய கடற்படையின் நீர்மூழ்கிக் கப்பல்கள் சிட்னி நகரைத் தாக்கின.
1961 - தென்னாபிரிக்கா பொதுநலவாய அமைப்பில் இருந்து விலகியது. தென்னாபிரிக்கக் குடியரசு அமைக்கப்பட்டது.
1962 - மேற்கிந்தியத் தீவுகளின் கூட்டமைப்பு கலைக்கப்பட்டது.
1970 - பெருவில் இடம்பெற்ற நிலநடுக்கத்தில் யூங்கே என்ற நகர் முழுமையாகப் புதையுண்டதில் 47,000 பேர் கொல்லப்பட்டனர்.
1997 - கனடாவில் நியூ பிரன்ஸ்விக்கையும் பிரின்ஸ் எட்வர்ட் தீவையும் இணைக்கும் கூட்டமைப்புப் பாலம் (Confederation Bridge) திறக்கப்பட்டது.
1981 - யாழ்ப்பாணம் பொது நூலகம் நள்ளிரவு நேரம் இலங்கை காவல் துறையினரால் எரிக்கப்பட்டது.
2004 - வீரகேசரி பத்திரிகை நிருபரும் பத்திரிகையாளருமான ஐயாத்துரை நடேசன் மட்டக்களப்பில் சுட்டுக்கொல்லப்பட்டார்.
2005 - இலங்கையின் புலனாய்வுத்துறை உயர் அதிகாரி மேஐர் நிசாம் முத்தாலிப் கொழும்பில் சுட்டுக்கொல்லப்பட்டார்.
2007 - டொராண்டோ தமிழியல் மாநாடு ஆரம்பமானது.

பிறப்புகள்

1048 - ஓமர் கையாம், பேர்சிய மெய்யியலாளர் (இ. 1131)
1911 - கே. சி. எஸ். பணிக்கர், தமிழ்நாட்டைச் சேர்ந்த ஓவியர், (இ. 1977)
1931 - நீலாவணன், ஈழத்துக் கவிஞர் (இ. 1975)

இறப்புகள்

1809 - ஜோசப் ஹேடன், மேற்கத்திய இசையறிஞர் (பி. 1732)
1832 - கால்வா, பிரெஞ்சு கணிதவியலர் (பி. 1811)
1987 - ஜான் ஆபிரகாம், திரைப்பட இயக்குநர் (பி. 19937)
2004 - ஐயாத்துரை நடேசன், ஈழத்துப் பத்திரிகையாளர்

சிறப்பு நாள்

புகையிலை எதிர்ப்பு நாள்

Water Reflection (HQ)

Germany may be birthplace of European music and art

Perforated teeth and ornaments from the Aurignacian site of Geißenklösterle.

The remains of the world's oldest musical instruments and human figurines suggest that music and artistic depictions of the human form may have first developed in Germany around 40,000 years ago, say researchers.

This is two to three millennia earlier than previously thought.

Scientists need an accurate timeline of events in Europe to understand the development of human culture.

They get this by carbon-dating objects from archaeological sites. But before this study, there were large variations in the carbon dates from Europe's many stone-age sites.

Now, analysis at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit has used new techniques to remove contamination from the samples, producing more accurate results. The team's findings suggest that the Swabian Jura of southwest Germany was a key site in the development of modern human culture in Europe.

Bird bone flute from the Geißenklösterle

"We started using improved techniques back in 2001, and we noticed something very interesting," explains Professor Tom Higham from the University of Oxford, lead author of a paper published in the Journal of Human Evolution. "When we re-dated objects, the results tended to be a lot older than we previously thought, and this is because we removed contaminants more successfully."

"So we applied the same methods to sites with evidence for the earliest modern humans, sites where the ages you measure are critically important. We found that the dates are much more consistent – the new dating work has made sense of the sites."

Most scholars think that the transition from a Neanderthal-dominated Europe to one populated by modern humans happened 35,000 to 45,000 years ago. Scientists call this the Aurignacian period, when modern humans become widespread all over Europe. Archaeologists have found evidence for more developed artistic expression around this time, rather than just decorative patterns. What scientists don't know is how this spread of people and ideas happened. The findings in Germany help provide an answer.

While modern humans were developing art, music and mythology in the Swabia, parts of central and Western Europe were still populated by Neanderthals. The researchers think that the early humans moved into the Swabian Jura along the Danube corridor, before moving into Italy and France later, which explains why the Swabian artifacts are a little bit older than those from other areas.

"The Danube corridor idea was first proposed around ten years ago. It suggests that people moved along this river corridor at an early date. It's a good idea because people need to be near sources of water,' Higham says. 'There are several early sites along the Danube River which support this idea."

The artifacts found in the German sites include the oldest representation of the human body that has ever been discovered. Professor Nicholas Conard from the University of Tubingen, who was also involved in the new analysis, found the Venus of Hohle Fels in 2008. It was sculpted out of a wooly mammoth tusk. Also found in the mountain caves were fragments of the oldest bone flutes yet unearthed. These instruments were and painstakingly put together over three years.

'When you get people making these types of objects, it tells us a lot about cognitive ability and also the potential for early forms of spirituality and perhaps religion,' Higham says. 'We see very interesting artefacts like the lion men, which were figurines made half-human, half-lion.'

"The flutes have been reconstructed and played and the music has been recorded. They sound like flutes - they really can be played. The people who made these artifacts were not just anatomically but behaviorally similar to us."

Both the flutes and the Venus were once parts of a living creature; this means they can be carbon-dated. Carbon dating involves measuring the amount of the heavy form of carbon, carbon-14, present in tiny samples from the artefacts. Carbon-14 is taken up during the lives of plants, and passed to animals that eat them, but once the plant is dead, that carbon breaks down and isn't replaced. Therefore older bones have less carbon-14, letting us determine their age.

More information: Thomas Higham, et al., Testing models for the beginnings of the Aurignacian and the advent of figurative art and music: The radiocarbon chronology of Geißenklösterle. Journal of Human Evolution. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.03.003

Provided by PlanetEarth Online

"Germany may be birthplace of European music and art." May 29th, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-05-germany-birthplace-european-music-art.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Happiness wave study reveals happy pensioners, and debunks middle-age blues myth

Happiness levels over a lifetime in Australia, Britain and Germany.

(Medical Xpress) -- People are at their happiest at retirement age and their most miserable in their geriatric years, a new study has found.

The study into the ‘happiness wave', conducted by Dr Tony Beatton of Queensland University of Technology and Professor Paul Frijters of The University of Queensland, has revealed how happiness changes over a lifetime for people living in Australia, Germany and Britain.

“We all strive towards happiness, but we wanted to find out at what point in life we actually reach this goal,” said Dr Beatton.

The same study has debunked the idea of the middle-age blues, blaming an over-representation of unhappy respondents in previous surveys.

Collecting data from more than 60,000 people in Australia, Britain and Germany, the pair found people were happiest as they entered retirement age (55-75), and most miserable close to death (80-90).

For a representative 18-year-old with a happiness level of 7 on a 10-point scale, the peak happiness age was found to be 65 in Australia, reaching 7.3, compared with Britain (7.2 at aged 70), and Germany (7 at 65).

“Our interpretation of these findings is that individuals over 55 no longer have unrealistic expectations of what their life will be like and simply enjoy their reasonable health and wealth, leading to a marked surge in happiness. As their health starts to deteriorate after 75, their happiness plunges,” said Dr Beatton.

The study considered figures from three surveys – the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey of 16,000 people in Australia, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) of 25,000 in England and the German Socioeconomic Panel Survey (GSOEP) of 20,600 people in Germany.

It found in Australia, happiness peaks at 7.3 by age 65 but then drops increasingly fast as death approaches, with happiness levels at 6.6 at the age of 90 and over.

In Britain, the figures were similar, with the happiness peak slightly later at age 70, and the peak itself not as high as for Australians, reaching only 7.2, then declining to 6.3 over the age of 90.

“Life in old age is clearly relatively better in Australia than the UK, perchance because of the better weather, more generous public pensions, and more space for the grey nomads to roam,” said Dr Beatton.

In Germany, happiness peaks at 7 at age 65, preceded by a reduction in happiness during early adulthood. A sharp drop occurs after age 75. Over 90, happiness level drop to around 5.8.

“Life appears to simply get worse and worse in Germany after the age of 18,” said Dr Beatton.

“Also, it appears mainly miserable middle-aged Germans respond to the GSOEP, and they become more honest and miserable as they answer the questions year after year, leaving problems with the data.”

Previous studies appear to have been hampered by having relatively more middle-aged people in their data than in the actual population.

“Happy people in middle age are busy and don't have time to participate in lengthy surveys, while more miserable people tend to keep responding to the survey. This led previous studies to erroneously show high degrees of unhappiness in middle-age,” said Dr Beatton.

“If you follow the same people over time however, you do not see this drop in happiness level when people get into their 40s, hence no middle-age ‘U-shaped blues' pattern can be found, particularly not in Australia or Britain,” he said.

The study has since been published in the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation.

More information: The freely available early working paper version of the study can be found here: http://ideas.repec … 2008-15.html and the complete published paper is available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2012.03.008

Provided by University of Queensland

"Happiness wave study reveals happy pensioners, and debunks middle-age blues myth." May 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-happiness-reveals-happy-pensioners-debunks.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

New approach to screen pregnant women for mental health disorders

A new model of care for screening and treating women around the time of childbirth for mental health disorders shows promise according to researchers from South Africa reporting in this week's PLoS Medicine as part of the newly launched series in global mental health practice.

There is no routine screening or treatment of maternal mental disorders in primary care settings in South Africa so the researchers, led by Simone Honikman from the University of Cape Town, implemented a program (the Perinatal Mental Health Project) in Cape Town, South Africa. This program included training for health care workers, implementing routine antenatal screening for maternal mental distress, and establishing referral networks to on-site counsellors and mental health professionals. It represents one of the first attempts to develop and implement a mental health programme for pregnant women in the developing world, where there is an extremely high (and often unrecognized) prevalence of maternal mental disorders.

The authors say: "The Perinatal Mental Health Project developed an intervention to deliver mental health care to pregnant women in a collaborative, step-wise manner making use of existing resources in primary care."

Over three years, the project achieved high levels of uptake and acceptability. From July 2008 to the end of June 2011, 90% of 6,347 women who attended the facility for primary level care were offered mental health screening and of the 5,407 screened, 32% qualified for referral to a counsellor, and 62% (1,079 women) agreed to be referred. A total of 1,981 counselling sessions were conducted and a small proportion (2%, 20 women) were referred to a psychiatrist. Importantly, most women (88% of those sampled) reported that they were more able to cope with their presenting problem as a result of the counselling.

The authors say: "Through routine screening and referral, the [Perinatal Mental Health Project] model demonstrates the feasibility and acceptability of a stepped care approach to provision of mental health care at the primary care level."

They continue: "These principles may inform the development of services in similar primary health settings."

More information: Honikman S, van Heyningen T, Field S, Baron E, Tomlinson M (2012) Stepped Care for Maternal Mental Health: A Case Study of the Perinatal Mental Health Project in South Africa. PLoS Med 9(5): e1001222. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001222

Provided by Public Library of Science

"New approach to screen pregnant women for mental health disorders." May 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-approach-screen-pregnant-women-mental.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

IU bisexuality studies focus on health, behavior and identity

Pictured are Vanessa Schick and Brian Dodge. Credit: Indiana University

Bisexuality, often stigmatized, typically has been lumped with homosexuality in previous public health research. But when Indiana University scientists recently focused on the health issues and behaviours specific to behaviorally bisexual men and women, they found tremendous variety and that commonly used labels, such as heterosexual and homosexual, can sometimes do more harm than good.

Bisexual, gay, lesbian, queer, men who have sex with men (MSM), and women who have sex with women (WSW) -- these are just some of the terms commonly used to characterize sexual partnering and attraction in recent research. Behavioural science researchers have long known that socially constructed sexual identity "labels" (like "gay") are often not always reflective of the diversity and complexity of an individual's sexual behaviours. A study by Vanessa Schick, an assistant research scientist at the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at IU Bloomington, found that how women relate to their labels could influence their health.

Schick's study involved 2,578 women who reported a history of attraction or sexual encounters with women. The Web-based survey asked about mental, physical and sexual wellness. In the paper "Bidentity: Sexual Behavior/Identity Congruence and Women's Sexual, Physical and Mental Well-Being," Schick reports that the women who identified as bisexual or lesbian said the best health when their sexual identity matched their recent sexual history.

However, Schick warned against interpreting this as evidence that women should declare a sexual identity that corresponds to their sexual behaviour. Instead, she points to the experiences of women who labelled themselves as "queer," a sexual identity sometimes endorsed by individuals who want to reject traditional labels that suggest the gender of their sexual partners.

"Unlike the other women in the study, the mental, physical and sexual well-being of queer-identified women was not related to the gender of their recent sexual partners," she said.

"This suggests that, instead of encouraging women to adopt labels that are more descriptive of their behaviour, we should be more flexible in the behavioural expectations that we attach to these labels."

For various reasons, men and women often identify openly or just to themselves with a label that is different from their sexual history. One such reason is biphobia, the stigma and discrimination that bisexual individuals experience from heterosexual and homosexual individuals.

Brian Dodge, associate professor in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation and associate director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion, found in his study on sexual health among bisexual men that factors associated with biphobia contributed to feelings of isolation and social stress reported by many of his study participants. Dodge's qualitative study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is based on in-depth interviews with 75 bisexual men from the Indianapolis area, ages 19 to 70, equally divided among Latino participants, non-Latino black participants and non-Latino white participants.

"There have been large quantitative studies that examined the mental health status of men who have sex with both men and women," Dodge said, "but no one has sat down and talked with these men about it. When we did, men were saying explicitly that being bisexual, not having a community to be involved with, not having people they could disclose to, homosexual or heterosexual, was tied to their experiences of adverse mental health."

These are just some of the findings in the special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality, published last week. Guest edited by Dodge and Schick, the special issue includes articles that stray from the more typical focus on sexual risk and sexually transmitted infections and cover topics including physical health and wellness, sexual health, and mental health among people whose identities or behaviours indicate bisexuality. Researchers contributing to the issue come from such institutions as Emory University, George Mason University, Columbia University, George Washington University and the IU School of Medicine.

"The issue gives a nice snapshot of how diverse bisexuality is among men and women," Dodge said.

Here are more findings from Dodge's and Schick's studies: 

• Schick's paper "Variations in the Sexual Repertoires of Bisexually Identified Women in the United States and the United Kingdom" examined the diversity of sexual behaviour reported by bisexual women. When looking at their recent sexual experiences, the women were divided almost evenly as having no current sexual partners, having only a male sexual partner, only a female sexual partner, or both male and female sexual partners. This study involved 710 bisexually identified women, making it one of the most extensive studies of its kind. "Like all people, bisexual women live their sexual lives in diverse ways," Schick said. "Some women may choose to have male and female partners while others may engage in sexual behaviour with only men or women. Other bisexually identified women may decide not to have any sexual partners at all. They don't simply fit into one mould. This contradicts the hypersexualized representations of bisexual women that we often find within the media."
• For both papers in the special issue, Schick and her research team gathered more detailed information than other studies because of the variety of questions asked. Instead of asking whether they used a sex toy, they asked about five different kinds of toys. When they asked about behaviours such as oral sex, they asked who was giving and receiving separately for men and women. They found that bisexual women tended to engage in parallel behaviours with men and women. In other words, they were similarly as likely to engage in oral sex with a male partner as they were to engage in oral sex with a female partner.
• In Dodge's study, men were asked to report a wide range of sexual behaviours with both male and female partners based on measures developed for the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, a recent study conducted by the Center for Sexual Health Promotion examining the sexual behaviours and experiences of a nationally representative sample of more than 6,000 individuals in the United States. Such detailed data on the specific oral, vaginal, anal and other sexual behaviours these men engage with male and female partners have been absent from scientific literature. The paper "Sexual Behaviors and Experiences Among Behaviorally Bisexual Men in the Midwestern United States: Implications for Interventions," written by postdoctoral research fellow Omar Martinez of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University, explores the unique sexual behaviours and experiences of bisexual Latino men in the study.
• In Dodge's paper "Individual and Social Factors Related to Mental Health Concerns Among Bisexual Men in the Midwestern United States," participants reported mental health concerns tied to both individual and social struggles associated with being bisexual, notably the isolation and lack of support and perceived stigma associated with bisexuality among men. They reported feeling they would automatically receive adverse reactions from both homosexual and heterosexual families, friends and other people in their social networks. As a result, participants were not likely to disclose their bisexuality, further increasing their invisibility and isolation.
• In large part, men in Dodge's study tended to use condoms with male partners for HIV/STI prevention and with female partners for pregnancy prevention. Women were seen as " safer " regarding STI transmission risk. In the paper "Subjective Sexual Experiences of Behaviorally Bisexual Men in the Midwestern United States: Sexual Attraction, Sexual Behaviors and Condom Use," authored by IU doctoral candidate Phillip Schnarrs, participants describe the patterns and meanings of their sexual repertoires with both male and female partners.

Dodge said a better understanding of men's sexual behaviours and experiences will lead to more effective health programming for bisexual men and their male and female sexual partners.

"Because the content of most current sexual health programs for gay and bisexual men focus only on their behaviours and experiences with male partners, interventions are urgently needed that are specifically tailored to the wide range of sexual behaviours and experiences which bisexual men share with both male and female partners," he said.

More information: In addition to the special issue of the Journal of Bisexuality, scientific papers from Dodge's study have also been recently published in Archives of Sexual Behavior; Sexual Health; Culture, Health & Sexuality; and AIDS Education & Prevention. Schick's studies were conducted in partnership with GaydarGirls. Scientific papers from Schick's study have been published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine and Sexually Transmitted Infections.

Provided by Indiana University

"IU bisexuality studies focus on health, behaviour and identity." May 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-iu-bisexuality-focus-health-behavior.html

Posted by

Robert Karl Stonjek

Youth mental health experts publish new guidelines to treat childhood aggression

Mayo Clinic researchers, in collaboration with other research institutions and youth mental health experts, are publishing new guidelines for primary care providers and mental health specialists to manage the common but often complex problem of childhood aggression. The goals include improving diagnosis and care and avoiding inappropriate use of medication.

The guidelines, titled "Treatment of Maladaptive Aggression in Youth," are published online this week in the journal Pediatrics. The guidelines -- intended for primary care and mental health specialists — are free and publicly available via a downloadable, user-friendly toolkit.

Treating and managing aggression is generally difficult, says Peter Jensen, M.D., a Mayo Clinic psychiatrist who led the development of the new guidelines. More troubling, he says, are that antipsychotics and mood-stabilizing drugs are increasingly prescribed to children on an outpatient basis to treat overt aggression, a symptom that may have multiple causes, Dr. Jensen says.

"These large-scale shifts in treatment practices have occurred despite potentially troubling side effects and a lack of supportive empirical evidence," Dr. Jensen says. "With the increase in the prescription of psychotropic agents outside of FDA-approved indications, concerns have been raised over treatment decision-making, appropriate use of alternative therapies, long-term management, safety of multiple drug regimens and successful parental engagement and education."

To better address this clinical need and improve outcomes for children and adolescents with maladaptive aggression, a group — including Mayo Clinic, The REACH Institute, the Center for Education and Research on Mental Health Therapeutics at Rutgers University, and 60 national experts in the fields of policy, research, advocacy and child and adolescent psychiatry — joined to achieve consensus on improving the diagnosis and treatment of aggressive children and adolescents.

"The guidelines were developed to help mental health specialists and primary care clinicians work closely together in the optimal management of the all-too-common, but very difficult problem of aggression in children and youth," Dr. Jensen says.

Recommendations include carefully engaging and forming a strong treatment alliance with the patient and family; conducting a rigorous, thorough diagnostic workup; carefully measuring treatment response and outcomes using reliable assessment tools; providing education and support for families; helping families obtain community and educational resources; using proven psychological therapies before starting any antipsychotic or mood stabilizer medications; and carefully tracking (and preventing, whenever possible) side effects.

Provided by Mayo Clinic

"Youth mental health experts publish new guidelines to treat childhood aggression." May 30th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-youth-mental-health-experts-publish.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

Overdiagnosis poses significant threat to human health

Overdiagnosis poses a significant threat to human health by labeling healthy people as sick and wasting resources on unnecessary care, warns Ray Moynihan, Senior Research Fellow at Bond University in Australia, in a feature published on BMJtoday.

The feature comes as an international conference 'Preventing Overdiagnosis' is announced for Sept. 10-12, 2013, in the United States, hosted by The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, in partnership with the BMJ, the leading consumer organization Consumer Reports and Bond University, Australia.

The conference is timely, says Moynihan because "as evidence mounts that we're harming the healthy, concern about overdiagnosis is giving way to concerted action on how to prevent it."

"The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice has long been a leader in understanding and communicating the problems of overdiagnosis," say Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz, professors of medicine at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. "We are extremely excited to host this international conference to advance the science and develop concrete proposals to reduce overdiagnosis and its associated harms."

Overdiagnosis occurs when people are diagnosed and treated for conditions that will never cause them harm and there's growing evidence that this occurs for a wide range of conditions.

For example, a large Canadian study finds that almost a third of people diagnosed with asthma may not have the condition; a systematic review suggests up to one in three breast cancers detected through screenings may be overdiagnosed; and some researchers argue osteoporosis treatments may do more harm than good for women at very low risk of future fracture.

Many factors are driving overdiagnosis, including commercial and professional vested interests, legal incentives and cultural issues, say Moynihan and co-authors, Professors Jenny Doust and David Henry. Ever-more sensitive tests are detecting tiny "abnormalities" that will never progress, while widening disease definitions and lowering treatment thresholds mean people at ever lower risks receive permanent medical labels and life-long therapies that will fail to benefit many of them.

Added to this, is the cost of wasted resources that could be better used to prevent and treat genuine illness.

But Moynihan argues that the main problem of overdiagnosis lies in a strong cultural belief in early detection, fed by deep faith in medical technology. "Increasingly we've come to regard simply being 'at risk' of future disease as being a disease in its own right," he says.

"It took many years for doctors to accept that bacteria caused peptic ulcers," says co-author of the BMJ feature, Dr. David Henry, chief executive officer of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, and professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada. "Likewise, it will be hard for doctors and the public to recognize that the earliest detection of disease is not always in the best interests of patients."

So what can we do about overdiagnosis?

The 2013 conference will provide a forum for learning more, increasing awareness, and developing ways to prevent the problem. At a policy level, there is a clear need for more independent disease definition processes free from financial conflicts of interest, and a change from the incentives that tend to reward overdiagnosis.

A leading global authority on evidence-based practice, Professor Paul Glasziou from Bond University in Australia says: "As a side effect of our improving diagnostic technology, overdiagnosis is a rapidly growing problem; we must take it seriously now or suffer the consequences of overtreatment and rising health care waste."

As Moynihan and colleagues write in their BMJ feature, concern about overdiagnosis in no way precludes awareness that many people miss out on much needed healthcare. On the contrary, resources wasted on unnecessary care can be much better spent treating and preventing genuine illness, not pseudo-disease. "The challenge is to work out which is which, and to produce and disseminate evidence to help us all make more informed decisions about when a diagnosis might do us more harm than good," they conclude.

Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the BMJ, said: "The harm of overdiagnosis to individuals and the cost to health systems is becoming ever clearer. Far less clear is what we should do about it. Next year's conference is an important step towards some evidence based solutions."

More information: http://www.bmj.com … 36/bmj.e3502

Provided by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center

"Overdiagnosis poses significant threat to human health." May 30th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-overdiagnosis-poses-significant-threat-human.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Handful of genetic changes led to huge changes to human brain

Changes to just three genetic letters among billions led to evolution and development of the mammalian motor sensory network, and laid the groundwork for the defining characteristics of the human brain, Yale University researchers report.

This networks provides the direct synaptic connections between the multi-layered neocortex in the human brain responsible for emotions, perception, and cognition and the neural centers of the brain that make fine motor skills possible.

A description of how a few simple changes during the early development of mammals led to the creation of complex structures such as the human brain was published May 31 in the journal Nature.

"What we found are the genetic zip codes that direct cells to form the motorsensory network of the neocortex," said Nenad Sestan, associate professor of neurobiology, a researcher for the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, and senior author of the paper

The paper investigated the genetic changes that occur during the early stages of development of an embryo and that direct cells to take on specific functions. Bits of DNA that do not code for proteins, called cis-regulatory elements, have been previously identified as critical drivers of evolution. These elements control the activation of genes that carry out the formation of the basic body plans of all organisms.

Sungbo Shim, the first author, and other members of Sestan's lab identified one such regulatory DNA region, which they named E4, that specifically enhances development of the corticospinal system. E4 is conserved in all mammals, indicating its importance to survival, the scientists explain. The lab also discovered how SOX4, SOX11, and SOX5 – sections of DNA called transcription factors — control the expression of genes and operate cooperatively to shape this network in the developing embryo. The changes in the genetic alphabet needed to trigger these evolutionary changes were tiny, note the researchers.

By manipulating only three genetic letters, scientists were able to functionally "jumpstart" regulatory activity in a zebrafish.

The authors also show that SOX4 and SOX11 are important for the layering of the neocortex, an essential change that led to increased complexity of the brain organization in mammals, including humans.

"Together, our fine motor skills that allow us to manipulate tools, walk, speak, and write, as well as our cognitive and emotional abilities that allow us to think, love, and plan all derive from these changes," Sestan said.

Sestan's lab is also investigating whether other types of changes in these genes and regulatory elements early in development might lead to intellectual disability and autism.

Provided by Yale University

"Handful of genetic changes led to huge changes to human brain." May 30th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-genetic-huge-human-brain.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Study finds TV can decrease self-esteem in children, except white boys

If you are a white girl, a black girl or a black boy, exposure to today's electronic media in the long run tends to make you feel worse about yourself. If you're a white boy, you'll feel better, according to a new study led by an Indiana University professor.

Nicole Martins, an assistant professor of telecommunications in the IU College of Arts and Sciences, and Kristen Harrison, professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, also found that black children in their study spent, on average, an extra 10 hours a week watching television.

"We can't deny the fact that media has an influence when they're spending most of their time -- when they're not in school -- with the television," Martins said.

Harrison added, "Children who are not doing other things besides watching television cannot help but compare themselves to what they see on the screen."

Their paper has been published in Communication Research. Martins and Harrison surveyed a group of about 400 black and white preadolescent students in communities in the Midwest over a yearlong period. Rather than look at the impact of particular shows or genres, they focused on the correlation between the time in front of the TV and the impact on their self-esteem.

"Regardless of what show you're watching, if you're a white male, things in life are pretty good for you," Martins said of characters on TV. "You tend to be in positions of power, you have prestigious occupations, high education, glamorous houses, a beautiful wife, with very little portrayals of how hard you worked to get there.

"If you are a girl or a woman, what you see is that women on television are not given a variety of roles," she added. "The roles that they see are pretty simplistic; they're almost always one-dimensional and focused on the success they have because of how they look, not what they do or what they think or how they got there.

"This sexualization of women presumably leads to this negative impact on girls."

With regard to black boys, they are often criminalized in many programs, shown as hoodlums and buffoons, and without much variety in the kinds of roles they occupy.

"Young black boys are getting the opposite message: that there is not lots of good things that you can aspire to," Martins said. "If we think about those kinds of messages, that's what's responsible for the impact.

"If we think just about the sheer amount of time they're spending, and not the messages, these kids are spending so much time with the media that they're not given a chance to explore other things they're good at, that could boost their self-esteem."

Martins said their study counters claims by producers that programs have been progressive in their depictions of under-represented populations. An earlier study co-authored by her and Harrison suggests that video games "are the worst offenders when it comes to representation of ethnicity and gender."

Other research is starting to show the impacts of other kinds of entertainment sources, such as video games and hand-held devices. It indicates that young people are becoming creative at "media multitasking."

"Even though these new technologies are becoming more available, kids still spend more time with TV than anything else," Martins said.

Interestingly, the young people were asked about their consumption of print media, but the results were not statistically significant.

Martins conducted the research while she was completing her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, as part of a larger longitudinal study done with her co-author, Harrison. They sought out certain school districts in Illinois because of their diversity, but African-Americans were the predominant minority group.

Provided by Indiana University

"Study finds TV can decrease self-esteem in children, except white boys." May 30th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-tv-decrease-self-esteem-children-white.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Introduction to SHIRDI SAI BABA

The Divine Wonders of Shirdi Sai Baba

Physical sciences illuminate neurodegenerative diseases

Dementia. Credit: ©freshidea Fotolia

What do physicists, chemists, mathematicians and biologists have in common? One of the answers at Cambridge is a shared interest in unravelling the processes behind neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Motor Neurone Disease.

As more people live to a ripe old age, an increasing number of us will develop neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Despite the escalating economic costs and human misery associated with these diseases, we still know relatively little about how they develop or how best to tackle them.

Alzheimer’s is the most common neurodegenerative disease. “It’s an enormous problem and we’re not doing very well at the moment in slowing the disease or treating its symptoms effectively,” says Professor Peter St George-Hyslop.

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s are difficult to study for several reasons. “One is that it’s not easy to get pieces of living brain,” he explains. “It’s also a disease where patients become unable to speak for themselves, so unlike people with AIDS or breast cancer they aren’t demonstrating outside the houses of Parliament demanding funding.”

Although charities and campaigners are doing sterling work raising the profile of Alzheimer’s, until recently attitudes to neurodegenerative disease had much in common with the way we viewed cancer 50 years ago.

“We are, for Alzheimer’s, like where we were for cancer in the 1950s, when people didn’t like to talk about it, were frightened or ashamed of it. And therapeutically we are in the same place; although we are beginning to learn about these diseases we don’t yet have much in the way of effective therapies,” Professor St George-Hyslop says.

One crucial discovery is that proteins misfolding in the brain form clumps or aggregates and these play a major role in causing neurodegenerative diseases. When these proteins misfold they take on certain characteristics that become noxious to cells, but what we need to know now is why these proteins misfold, which aggregates do the damage, and how that damage occurs. Which is where physics, chemistry and mathematics enter the biological picture.

Professor St George-Hyslop leads a group of experts from disparate disciplines, each bringing different tools and different ways of working to the study of neurodegenerative diseases.

What began in late 2008 as a series of meetings has now developed into a 12-strong group funded by a £5.3 million Strategic Award from the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council. “It’s a very interesting group of people who came together because they wanted to come together. They each knew they had something to contribute but also that they needed something else – some skills, some knowledge, some point of view – from another member of the group,” he says.

“The biologists among us knew there were techniques that the physicists and chemists had that could help us. They in turn knew we had some biological knowledge that would help them apply, in a sensible way, their very good and insightful physical and chemical tools.”

Among the group is Professor David Klenerman from the Department of Chemistry. One of the inventors of rapid, high-throughput DNA sequencing, he is now applying this knowledge to protein misfolding. From the same department comes Professor Michele Vendruscolo, a theoretical physicist working on the mechanics and thermodynamics of protein misfolding. Professor Chris Dobson, who is also from the Department of Chemistry works on protein misfolding in neurodegenerative diseases, while from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology Dr. Clemens Kaminski brings modern laser spectroscopy tools that allow you to watch these proteins misfold inside living cells in real time.

The group has applied these physical tools to study nematode worms in which a mutation produces the same protein misfolding that causes disease in humans. “That ability to see these things as they happen in a living model give us a much greater understanding compared with previous techniques, which essentially involved grinding up biological samples and examining them after these processes had occurred,” Professor St George-Hyslop explains.

“What’s important is the marriage of the physical tool with the biological question,” he says. And he hopes that by revealing where these misfolded proteins act, these new tools could help researchers develop ways of blocking the damage they cause in both Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

“The primary goal is to understand what the beginning and the middle parts of the process are. We know what the end is – the cell dies and you get a disease – but if you know why the cells get sick and what the mechanisms are then you have a better chance of preventing or halting it,” says Professor St George- Hyslop. “Our goal is to provide that fundamental knowledge of cause and mechanism. Hopefully from that will come some idea of which parts of those pathways you can monitor as a diagnostic and which parts you can block or change as a treatment.”

More recently, the group has been enlarged by a £4.5 million grant from the National Institute of Health Research to support an extension of the Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre via the creation of a Biomedical Research Unit in Dementia for translational research. This has allowed the inclusion of researchers in immunology and in brain imaging from the Department of Medicine and the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre.

Provided by University of Cambridge

"Physical sciences illuminate neurodegenerative diseases." May 29th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-physical-sciences-illuminate-neurodegenerative-diseases.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

OUP research reveals children's imaginative language use

The OUP research shows that children are extremely inventive in their storytelling and language use.

Innovative use of language, a firm grasp of technology, and a thirst for unusual words are just some of the findings revealed about how children use language according to new Oxford University Press (OUP) research.

The research was compiled by lexicographers in OUP's Children’s Dictionaries team based on an analysis of thousands of short stories sent into a BBC radio competition for children in the UK. 

A summary of the report has been released, revealing a wealth of information about children's patterns in language, grammatical structures, and vocabulary use.

The results show that children are extremely inventive in their storytelling and language use, with many stories focusing on genetic experiments, espionage, and futuristic gadgets. Favorites of the researchers included the 'fingerlaser,' a planet-shrinking 'zaporator' and the 'electrostone', a device that can disable electrical circuits. Robotic hybrids such as the 'dog-bot', 'robo-dog', and 'teacherbot' grabbed adults' attention in equal measure.

Technology was also a theme in many stories. The terms 'google' and 'app' occur many times: 'googling' is a way to follow clues in a mystery;  and 'apps' can be downloaded for use as a prop, avatar, or weapon.

Contrary to concerns that increasing use and popularity of 'txtspk' will ruin children's vocabularies, youngsters demonstrated that they know when it is not appropriate, only including it in their stories when transcribing an imagined text message.

The research also found that many of the words contained in children’s stories are repeated from celebrated writers – suggesting a continued love of reading. Words included creatures such as J.K. Rowling's basilisk and hippogriff, J.R.R. Tolkien's orcs, and Lewis Carroll's bandersnatch.

Some children have some difficulties using punctuation correctly, and the misuse of the apostrophe was found to be a common problem. One of the most popular pieces of punctuation was the exclamation mark, which was used 351,731 times.

The results were based on the analysis of 74,075 stories submitted to the 2012 Chris Evans Show BBC Radio 2 '500 Words' short story competition. Lexicographers at OUP analysed the entries using the Oxford Children's Corpus – a large electronic database of real and authentic children's language.

The findings provide never-before-seen insights into English use among young people, offering invaluable resources for both language researchers and OUP's ongoing dictionaries program.

Samantha Armstrong, Senior Project Editor for OUP's Children's Dictionaries, said: "OUP uses powerful technology to track and analyze children's language and the message we are getting from the BBC "500 Words" stories is a powerful one – language is evolving and children are real language innovators. Perhaps we are catching a glimpse of the language of the future."

OUP publishes more than 500 dictionaries, thesauruses, and language reference titles in more than 40 languages, and in a variety of print and electronic formats.

Provided by Oxford University

"OUP research reveals children's imaginative language use." May 29th, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-05-oup-reveals-children-language.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek