Corpus Callosum is written by a psychiatrist at a small community hospital somewhere in midwestern USA. Email to cc.scienceblogger at gmail dot com.
August 29, 2007
Category: Psychiatry
Sexual assault is a common and serious problem. It is hypothesized that misconceptions (rape myths) may play a role in this. About 50% of sexual assaults involving adolescent or young adult female victims occur in the context of alcohol...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:53 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
Shows what can happen when you withhold cheezburgers. (The caption indicates that the lizard survived.) photo by Chickenboots....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:05 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 28, 2007
Category: Medicine
Google News no longer indexes ScienceBlogs, but they continue to link to drivel like this, from the Wall Street Journal: Lone Star Spending Spree By MARY KATHERINE STOUT August 25, 2007; Page A6 Austin, Texas Give George W. Bush...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:39 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
My non-expert identification of this: desert spiny lizard, Sceloporus magister....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 6:55 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
William Rivers Pitt argues that what the President, Cheney, and Gonzalez have done is not illegal. Apparently, it is not illegal for the President to declare himself and his administration to be above the law. The idea is so outrageous...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 2:04 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 27, 2007
Category: Humor
From Cellar Image of the Day......
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:13 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Chatter
What would happen if you set up a system to automatically print out all the spam in the Universe? Never mind the question of why you would want to. (link)...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:00 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 25, 2007
Category: Social Commentary
This topic has been covered by Ed Brayton, twice, and by PZ Myers. This is a little update. A minister made headlines a couple of weeks ago when he called for "imprecatory prayer" against leaders of the the group, Americans...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 6:03 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
This controversy has been evolving for the past three years. Perhaps at this point it is no longer newsworthy. But often, after a topic fades from the radar of the MSM, there are new findings. The journal, Psychological Medicine, has...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 2:13 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
A neat little podcast, in which ordinary people express incredulity at the notion of a medical doctor buying into young-earth creationism, is at Quirky Nomads. ...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:46 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Chatter
Someone has to put a stop to this....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 1:50 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 24, 2007
Category: Medicine
Health care is shaping up to be one of the big issues in the upcoming elections. No big surprise there, it was a highly -ranked issue in the last election, too. It's just that last time, voters failed to see...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:57 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 23, 2007
Category: Chatter
Product: Midol Menstrual Complete Label: Ask a doctor before use if you have difficulty urinating due to an enlarged prostate. Sound advice from Merck. But should sufferers of premenstrual syndrome really lose sleep over enlarged prostates? That's from a...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:03 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Environment
The Global Change Research Act of 1990 requires the federal government to publish climate-change research plans every three years, and assessment reports every four years. Both are now overdue. The research plan is one year overdue, and the assessment report...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:33 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 22, 2007
Category: Politics
Senator Dick Durbin has started a project using an innovative method of writing legislation: What should be America's national broadband strategy? by: Dick Durbin Sun Jul 22, 2007 at 13:06:58 PM EDT (This diary will remain at the top of...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:23 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
In 2005, there was a plague. It started inadvertently, as most do, but spread rapidly, resulting in many deaths. Officials scrambled to find a solution. Eventually it was contained. The plague was caused by a miscoded spell (Corrupted Blood),...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:25 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
Made with Legos. This was dreamed up by their development team, but never merketed....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:26 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 21, 2007
Category: Computing
Wikipedia Picture of the day An animated cubic Bézier curve (see other types), a parametric curve important in computer graphics. Modern computer fonts use Bézier splines composed of quadratic or cubic Bézier curves to create typefaces. Image credit: Phil...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:24 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 20, 2007
Category: Science News
I just love things like this. An open-access article in PNAS reports on a previously-unknown method of signaling employed by squirrels. The squirrels have a way of enhancing a tail-flagging movement with an IR signal. The IR enhancement is...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:56 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
These things are hard to photograph. They are faster than I am, that is for sure. Out of about 30 shots, at least a few were decent. These are said to be the smallest birds in the USA. They...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:18 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Bioethics
Hard to know what to make of this. The American Psychological Association considered a proposal to ban participation in military interrogations. Specifically, APA members would have been prohibited from assisting in interrogations "in which detainees are deprived of adequate protection...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:46 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 19, 2007
Category: Photos of Interest
Spent part of the afternoon trying to get better pictures of the woodpeckers, but I am not happy with any of the pictures I got. So here is someone else's picture: I think it is easier to get pictures of...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:05 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 18, 2007
Category: Social Commentary
No money down, but the payments go on forever. The only people who win are the bankers and the contractors. We make it easy to get in. But like herpes and condominiums, it is hard to get rid of. When...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:50 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 17, 2007
Category: Medicine
How refreshing: a Presidential appointee speaks out unequivocally against Administration policy. This is from a Medscape News article (free registration), which is from Reuters Heath Information. The report quotes a professor of Immunology who is on the President's Cancer Panel...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:12 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
Not much commentary needed on this graphic. HT to Blast Off!. Most of the liberals are actually conservative. Some of the Republican candidates are close to being as authoritarian as Hitler or Stalin. I thought Ron Paul would have been...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:27 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 16, 2007
Category: Politics
At first you would not think that pirates would try to establish a base in Utah. There are not a lot of coves or bays there. Even so, it is the first State to have an official pirate base. They...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:24 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
Next to the headline "Corporate America Braces for Market Fallout," is a photo, selected at random, of a guy diving in front of some skyscrapers. It is not intended as an illustration for the article, but at first glance it...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 2:02 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
This is from a small study, so it would be inappropriate to draw a broad conclusion from it. Still, it is kind of interesting. Bupropion in the Treatment of Outpatients with Asthma and Major Depressive Disorder E. Sherwood Brown, Lana...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:48 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 13, 2007
Category: Photos of Interest
Some people did not believe that the picutre of the surfing dog was real. I can't prove it either way, with respect to that particujlar dog, but I did find a video of a different dog surfing. This might give...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:36 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Environment
An article in Forbes documents exorbitant commuter costs in some communities. In and around Houston, for example, the average commuter spends 20% of their household income on commuting. That, together with housing costs, adds to more than 50% of household...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:55 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 12, 2007
Category: Photos of Interest
Here it is again, with unsharp mask applied, and increased contrast....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 1:54 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
I am now sure this is a ladderback. The photos are not very sharp, having been taken through a window screen, but it still was fun. The cat was going nuts. That's how I knew there was something outside....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 1:42 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Chatter
I had not seen this when I first posted about the bhut jolokia -- the world's hottest chile pepper. There is a woman, Annindita Tamuly, in India who can eat 60 of them in two minutes. And she smiles while...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:21 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 11, 2007
Category: Propaganda
The headline: Federal Deficit Sharply Lower. The text: The lower year-to-date deficit was the result of a record of $2.12 trillion in revenues. Spending, however, was higher -- $2.27 trillion, which also marked an all-time high. So we spent...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:44 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 10, 2007
Category: Photos of Interest
That, by the way, is a cobra's head in the man's mouth. Courtesy of Sky News "We've scoured the globe for some of the best, strangest and most dramatic photographic images..." They quipped that snake charming is "a dying...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 4:42 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
It is reasonably well established that treatment with bright light is effective for seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The standard treatment is to have someone expose their face to 10,000 Lux of bright light every morning, for 30 minutes, preferably at...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:01 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
A while back, Shelly wrote a nice introduction to ADHD at Retrospectacle: The Neuroscience of ADHD. Read that first, for background, then consider this to be a minor addendum. There are still people who believe that ADHD is not real....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:50 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
Since the last one of these I did was kind of scary, I decided to do one that is not so scary. It is just plain weird. But there is an interesting story to it. The female is on the...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:25 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
When unemployment is high, there is more penetrating trauma (bullets, knives). When employment is high, there is more blunt trauma (automobile crashes). Unemployment predicts hospital trauma Published: Aug. 9, 2007 at 9:48 PM NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- A...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:11 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 7, 2007
Category: Medicine
The problem, specifically, is that patients with insurance have higher copays and deductibles. According to an article on Medscape (free registration required): U.S. Hospitals Struggle Over Who Can Afford to Pay By Kim Dixon CHICAGO (Reuters Life!) Aug 06 -...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:03 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
This is featured at the PNAS site. It appears to not have a permanent link, but it currently is the PNAS Featured Image on their PNAS in the News page. The caption: The intromittent organ of male seed beetles...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:58 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
This is an interesting exercise. Go to a site and state your position are various issues that are major themes for next year's Presidential election. Also rank the importance of each issue to you. When you do this, you...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:31 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
The US Army Crops of Engineers accidentally dumped hundreds of unexploded pieces of ordnance on the beach at Surf City. Now, they want the city to help pay for the cleanup. "If they're talking about getting any money out...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:07 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 6, 2007
Category: Politics
Donald Rumsfeld revealed the identity of the star witness in the Abu Grhaib case. The guy who blew the whistle had been promised anonymity....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 1:08 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
Put this near the top of things you don't want to do to yourself. This woman developed fever and abdominal pain, but did not disclose to her physician what she had done. That was her second mistake. The oval...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:12 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 5, 2007
Category: Neuroscience
At least in mice, that is: rendering the vomeronasal organ inactive by deleting the gene TRPC2 (transient receptor potential cation channel, subfamily C, member 2) results in profound behavioral changes. This was reported on Nature News: Nose goes, gender bends....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 6:59 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Social Issues
There is an article in the Christian Science Monitor about the history of tainted consumer goods. The author, Jane Whitaker, points out that the USA has a history of problems ever bit as bad as what we are seeing...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 1:48 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Public Health
Unexploded ordinance: the legacy of modern warfare. Reportedly, Laos has the undesired distinction of harboring the most UXO's of any country. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, of course. It's hard to imagine they have more than Iraq, but maybe nobody...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:14 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
LA Times photo by Stephen Osman Buddy, a 4-year-old Jack Russell terrier, catches a wave while surfing Rincon Point in Santa Barbara County, north of Ventura, Calif....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:14 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 4, 2007
Category: Chatter
Separation of Church and State often is controversial. Sometimes I worry about this in the USA, but I have never seen anything as bad as what they are doing in China: China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 2:27 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
An article in the Honk Kong Medical Journal reports on a seried of cases of Mah-jong Epilepsy. This is something I had not heard of before: it is considered a subtype of cognition-induced epilepsy. Mah-jong-induced seizures: case reports and review...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 1:32 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Chatter
This little devil gets a rating of over one million Scoville heat units. It's the Bhut Jolokia (ghost chile), also called the Naga Jolokia. According to the Brisbane Times, the growers hope it will replace the sagging tea farming...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:23 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 3, 2007
Category: Politics
Foreign Policy magazine has released the results of their second survey of 100 foreign policy experts, on the topic of national security. The results are compiled into what they call the Terrorism Index. Their sample is bipartisan, with about 40% of...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:56 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Computing
That is the conclusion of the most review review of the security of the Dielbold voting machines in California. Most damning is the finding that many of the previously-reported vulnerabilities have not been fixed....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 1:52 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
I happened to run across a couple of articles pertaining to cultural influences on mental health. Neither presented modern first-world culture in a positive light. The two articles are: Schizophrenia outcome measures in the wider international community; and A Longitudinal...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:06 AM •
