Invitation to a Dialogue: Benefits of Talk Therapy

We tend to divide treatments for mental illness into “psychological” approaches and “biological” ones; the former typically involve “talk therapy” and the latter medication. But this either-or way of thinking obscures the fact that talk therapy affects the brain and is no less biological than pills. 

Numerous findings over the last two decades demonstrate how talk therapy alters the brain. Disabling conditions like clinical depression and anxiety can be treated effectively by understanding distorted patterns of thought, becoming aware of emotional conflicts that have not been conscious, or practicing new behaviors. Talk therapy is a potent treatment for serious mental disorders and not simply for the “worried well,” as it is sometimes characterized.

  
For the rest of the story: http://veritasradio.blogspot.mx/2013/05/peering-at-bright-screens-after-dark.html

Peering at bright screens after dark could harm health, doctor claims

Light from TVs, computers, tablets and smartphones may disrupt sleep and raise risk of obesity, heart disease and depression.

The blue light from laptops, TVs and tablets is particularly good at disrupting the body's natural sleep cycle. Photograph: Getty.

 

Watching TV or using computers, tablets or smartphones after dark may cause sleep loss and resultant health problems, a leading doctor has warned.

Peering at brightly lit screens at night disrupts the body's natural rhythms and raises the risk of medical conditions linked to poor sleep, including obesity, heart disease, strokes and depression, he said.

The warning, from Charles Czeisler, director of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in the US, comes as cheap electricity and more portable devices make it easier to surf the web, read books and check social media on glowing gadgets at any time of night.

Artificial light can prevent a good night's rest by dampening down the activity of neurons that bring on sleep, activating those for wakefulness, and suppressing the sleep hormone, melatonin. Together these push back the natural clock that controls the body's sleep-wake cycle.

"As a result, many people are still checking email, doing homework, or watching TV at midnight, with hardly a clue that it is the middle of the solar night," Czeisler writes in the journal, Nature. "Technology has effectively decoupled us from the natural 24-hour day to which our bodies evolved, driving us to bed later. And we use caffeine in the morning to rise as early as we ever did, putting the squeeze on sleep."

For the rest of the story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/22/peering-bright-screens-dark-harm-health

Go East, Young Marijuana Dealer

Chuck used to sell marijuana in California. But the legalization of medical marijuana in the state meant he was suddenly competing against hundreds of marijuana dispensaries. So he moved to New York, where marijuana is still 100 percent illegal. Since making the move, he says, he's quadrupled his income. (For the record: His name isn't really Chuck.)

He spends pretty much every day dealing what he calls "farm-to-table" marijuana. On a recent afternoon in his dimly lit New York apartment, he was just about to complete a daily ritual: loading about 50 baggies of marijuana, worth a total of about $3,000 into his backpack, before heading out to make deliveries. "We're helping keep people stoned on a Friday night in New York City," he said.

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have now legalized marijuana, either for medical use or for fun. And, it turns out, when one state brings an underground market into the mainstream and another doesn't, there are economic consequences in both places.

Dealers aren't the only ones with an incentive to move marijuana out of California. The legalization of medical marijuana led to a rush of pot farmers with permits to grow marijuana legally. That in turn led to a supply glut — and plummeting wholesale prices. Some growers haven't been able to unload all their crops at the price they want on the local, legal market. So they break the law and send it out of state.

For the rest of the story: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/22/185832919/go-east-young-marijuana-dealer

How JFK secretly ADMIRED Hitler: Explosive book reveals former President’s praise for the Nazis as he travelled through Germany before Second World War

• A new book reveals President Kennedy was a secret admirer of the Nazis

• Embarrassingly close to visit being paid to Berlin next month by Obama 

Comes one week before 50th anniversary commemorations of JFK's memorable 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech pledging US solidarity with Europe

A new book out in Germany reveals how President Kennedy was a secret admirer of the Nazis.

The news comes embarrassingly close to a visit being paid to Berlin next month by President Obama - one week before 50th anniversary commemorations of JFK's memorable 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech pledging US solidarity with Europe during the Cold War. 

President Kennedy's travelogues and letters chronicling his wanderings through Germany before WWII, when Adolf Hitler was in power, have been unearthed and show him generally in favour of the movement that was to plunge the world into the greatest war in history.

 

'Fascism?' wrote the youthful president-to-be in one. 'The right thing for Germany.' 

In another; 'What are the evils of fascism compared to communism?'

And on August 21, 1937 - two years before the war that would claim 50 million lives broke out - he wrote: 'The Germans really are too good - therefore people have ganged up on them to protect themselves.'

For the rest of the story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329556/How-JFK-secretly-ADMIRED-Hitler-Explosive-book-reveals-Presidents-praise-Nazis-travelled-Germany-Second-World-War.html

Submerged structure stumps Israeli archaeologists

 

File - In this April 14, 2011 file photo, a boat is by the jetty of the Capernaum National Park in the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. The monumental structure, made of boulders and stones with a diameter of 70 meters, was found through a sonar scan at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee in 2003. Now, archaeologists are beginning to put together grant proposals and funding requests in a bid to permit them access to the submerged stones.(AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)

TIBERIAS, Israel (AP) — The massive circular structure appears to be an archaeologists dream: a recently discovered antiquity that could reveal secrets of ancient life in the Middle East and is just waiting to be excavated.

It's thousands of years old — a conical, manmade behemoth weighing hundreds of tons, practically begging to be explored.

The problem is — it's at the bottom of the biblical Sea of Galilee. For now, at least, Israeli researchers are left stranded on dry land, wondering what finds lurk below.

The monumental structure, made of boulders and stones with a diameter of 70 meters (230 feet), emerged from a routine sonar scan in 2003. Now archaeologists are trying to raise money to allow them access to the submerged stones.

For the rest of the story: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/submerged-structure-stumps-israeli-archaeologists

I Built This AK-47. It's Legal and Totally Untraceable.

Forget 3-D printed guns. Inside a "build party" where anyone can make a rifle that no cop will ever know about.

 

The wooden and steel parts I need to build my untraceable AK-47 fit within a slender, 15-by-12-inch cardboard box. I first lay eyes on them one Saturday morning in the garage of an eggshell-white industrial complex near Los Angeles. Foldout tables ring the edges of the room, surrounding two orange shop presses. The walls, dusty and stained, are lined with shelves of tools. I'm with a dozen other guys, some sipping coffee, others making introductions over the buzz of an air compressor. Most of us are strangers, but we share a common bond: We are just eight hours away from having our very own AK-47—one the government will never know about.

The AK-47, perhaps the world's best-known gun, is so easy to make and so hard to break that the Soviet-designed original has spawned countless variants, updated and modified versions churned out by factories all over the globe. Although US customs laws ban importing the weapons, parts kits—which include most original components of a Kalashnikov variant—are legal. So is reassembling them, as long as no more than 10 foreign-made components are used and they are mounted on a new receiver, the box-shaped central frame that holds the gun's key mechanics. There are no fussy irritations like, say, passing a background check to buy a kit. And because we're assembling the guns for our own "personal use," whatever that may entail, we're not required to stamp in serial numbers. These rifles are totally untraceable, and even under California's stringent assault weapons ban, that's perfectly within the law.

For the rest of the story: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/ak-47-semi-automatic-rifle-building-party

The Girl Who Turned to Bone

Unexpected discoveries in the quest to cure an extraordinary skeletal condition show how medically relevant rare diseases can be.  

 

When Jeannie Peeper was born in 1958, there was only one thing amiss: her big toes were short and crooked. Doctors fitted her with toe braces and sent her home. Two months later, a bulbous swelling appeared on the back of Peeper’s head. Her parents didn’t know why: she hadn’t hit her head on the side of her crib; she didn’t have an infected scratch. After a few days, the swelling vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

When Peeper’s mother noticed that the baby couldn’t open her mouth as wide as her sisters and brothers, she took her to the first of various doctors, seeking an explanation for her seemingly random assortment of symptoms. Peeper was 4 when the Mayo Clinic confirmed a diagnosis: she had a disorder known as fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP).

The name meant nothing to Peeper’s parents—unsurprising, given that it is one of the rarest diseases in the world. One in 2 million people have it.

For the rest of the story: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/06/the-mystery-of-the-second-skeleton/309305/