the New York Times
When it comes to religion, believers and nonbelievers appear to think very differently. But at the level of the brain, is believing in God different from believing that the sun is a star or that 4 is an even number?
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers exploring strategies for conserving the Diamondback Terrapin along Alabama's Dauphin Island coastline are working to keep the once-celebrated turtle off the endangered species list.
If you’re feeling ill trying to keep up with all the strange biofuel news these days, you might want to have some lab tests run. You could have a form of E. coli poisoning, a cyanobacteria outbreak, or maybe you accidentally ingested some highly toxic fire moss or perhaps bumped into a desert locust – feared since biblical times.
The New York Times this week has pointed out the growing popularity of “patient centered” practices in the city. These doctors make house calls, give their cell phone number to patients for after-hours consultations, and handle many patient issues without the help of a specialist. Doctors of the “patient centered” movement are redefining the doctor-patient relationship and recreating the personalized attention given by country doctors decades ago.
But how, in our age of overcrowded doctors’ offices and an overburdened healthcare system, are doctors able to give more attention to patients?
For Mark Changizi, it’s all in the eyes.
About half of the human brain is used for vision, and sight is the best understood and most thoroughly investigated of the five senses.
CHICAGO --- The 57-year-old lawyer in New York had handily completed the New York Times' Saturday crossword puzzle ? the hardest of the week ? for years. But one Saturday morning, suddenly he couldn't retrieve the words to fill in the squares.
The recent drinking and driving (DUI) arrests of celebrities--Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, Michelle Rodriguez and Lindsay Lohan--yielded widespread news coverage, however, very little of it offere
The New York Times has a profile of a finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search (for those of you who missed the change, that's the renamed Westinghouse competition). Newspaper articles -- by style less than by design -- are often cryptic, and this one notes in a single-sentence paragraph towards the end that the profiled student's project is "the only behavioral science project among the 40 finalists."
"This is a year of no jobs." Ph.D.s are stacked up "like planes hovering over La Guardia. -- Catherine Stimpson, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University.
Yesterday, the New York Times ran a science article under the following heading: In Pain and Joy of Envy, the Brain May Play a Role. It is a very well-written and engaging article of the subject of envy, which is a fascinating emotion.
The title, however, leaves something to be desired.
Each week, millions of readers look at the New York Times best-seller list to see what everybody else in the country is reading. And as soon as a title hits the list, booksellers typically push the book to the front of the store and slash its price by as much as 40 percent. So it seems reasonable to assume that once a book makes the list, its sales will really take off -- if not for the lower price, then because readers might view best-seller status as a sign of quality or because they don't want to miss the action. According to the Business School's Alan Sorensen, an assistant professor of strategic management who has studied the effect of best-seller lists on sales of hardcover fiction, the majority of book buyers seem to use the Times list as a signal of what's worth reading. Relatively unknown writers get the biggest benefit, while for perennial best-selling authors such as Danielle Steel and John Grisham, being on the list makes virtually no difference in sales.
Reporters and editors at four of the nation's top newspapers adhered to the journalistic norm of balance at the expense of accurately reporting scientific understanding of the human contributions to global warming, according to an analysis that appears in the current issue of the journal Global Environmental Change. The new study, ''Balance as Bias: Global Warming and the U.S. Prestige Press,'' examined coverage of human contributions to global warming in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal from 1988 to 2002 to assess how scientific findings were conveyed to readers.
MIT researchers have reported that a high-carbohydrate dietary supplement can help patients who experience weight gain while taking antidepressants. Even though the high-carbohydrate regimen altered serotonin levels, it did not alter the antidepressants' effectiveness. The regimen, which includes a high-carbohydrate drink developed at MIT based on research conducted here, also helped non-medicated obese individuals, the researchers reported. All participants lost between 12 and 26 pounds during the 12-week study. Patients taking psychotropic medications such as antidepressants that increase the activity of serotonin in the brain sometimes gain weight by overeating sweet and starchy foods.
By 2005, 130 million cell phones will be thrown out each year, according to a new study funded in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Counting the phones, batteries and chargers, that comes to 65,000 tons a year, most of which will end up in landfills or being incinerated. And that has environmentalists freaked. "This is becoming a very serious problem, because the amount of cell phone waste is growing tremendously," said Eric Most, a director at Inform, the group which issued the report. "These chemicals accumulate and persist in the environment. They get in the plants, soil, water, and then move up the stream to humans." One approach to countering the increase that seems to have general support is a "take-back" program, in which phone manufacturers must agree to take-back old phones when consumers upgrade. Another plan sure to be DOA: Limiting waste by standardizing design elements so consumers have fewer reasons to buy new phones. "If we had had a government standard in the beginning," one industry rep told the New York Times, "we'd still all be speaking on analog phones. And that means no e-mail, no text messaging, no Caller ID. Competition equals innovation in this case."
