j7uy5 | June 16, 2006What Ever Happened to Psychotherapy?
Or rather, what is happening to psychotherapy?
Here, I am picking up on a comment thread at Mad
Melancholic Feminista, under
href="http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2006/06/prozac-doesnt-get-anorexics-eating.html">the
post that Aspazia did about
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/06/drug_treatment_of_anorexia.php">my
post on pharmacotherapy of
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorexia_Nervosa" rel="tag">Anorexia
Nervosa.
The question is one that comes up a lot, and the answers, by SteveR (no
URL given) are…
j7uy5 | June 16, 2006
ScienceBlogs visitors prefer
href="http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/" rel="tag">Firefox.
If you lump together all the open-source browsers, they
account for over 50% of the page views here.
Highly-educated users use Firefox.
j7uy5 | June 15, 2006The mission of ScienceBlogs is to have the
href="http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:u_aOpFk1_6IJ:www.seedmediagroup.com/press/releases/SMG_01.25.06.pdf+web+largest+conversation+about+science&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a">Web's
largest conversation about science. I've been
posting here for a week. During that time, I've been trying
to decipher the
href="http://faculty.ircc.edu/faculty/jlett/Article%20on%20Emics%20and%20Etics.htm">emics
and etics of the community and its conversation.
It is apparent that, within this culture, it is important and…
j7uy5 | June 15, 2006This week's question:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.),
various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their
primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?
There are a few things to say about this. It helps to be
proficient with the technology involved, so that the process of writing
and posting is not itself an obstacle.
What I do to facilitate the process is this: first I get an idea, and
do a little background research. Only rarely to I sit and
write a port right away. Rather, I spend five minutes or so
scanning the articles that I will…
j7uy5 | June 15, 2006President Bush got a lot of credit for designating the Northwestern
Hawaiian Islands a national monument. The
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/15/science/earth/15hawaii.html?ex=1308024000&en=ce5a20136199dc60&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">description
in the New York Times was especially glowing.
Reading it, you would have no clue that it was not his idea
in the first place. The Washington Post
is a little better,
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402455.html">giving
credit to the guy who came up with the idea…
j7uy5 | June 15, 2006While doing background research for my next post, I learned that this
is National
Men's Health Week.
href="http://www.menshealthweek.org/">
The National Men's Health Week is an official government activity in
accordance with Senate
Joint Resolution 179 of 1994, introduced by
Senator Bob Dole. Remember Bob Dole? He used to be
the next President of the United States, and later became a
href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0815/is_1999_March/ai_54753537">spokesperson
for the Viagra advertising campaign.
Continue reading...
href="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/…
j7uy5 | June 14, 2006I used to work in an eating disorders treatment program. From
time to time, I give talks on the subject. When I get to the
part about the use of psychiatric medication, I always start with
something like this: "frankly, the role of medication in the treatment
of eating disorders is extremely limited."
This pessimistic view was amplified this week, by a report in the
href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/" rel="tag">Journal
of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
What is a bit unusual about the report is that it was picked
up in the major news media (
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/…
j7uy5 | June 13, 2006I've been working on a longish post that I am not yet happy with.
In the meantime, I am going to post this, just to call
attention to somebody else's work. I guess it also adds a
little local flavor to this blog.
href="http://jackshow.blogs.com/jack/2006/06/interview_bob_o.html">Interview:
Bob O'Neal - 6/13/06
When you are talking about politics these days and say the word
“religious” it usually is followed by the word
“right.” Dr. Bob O’Neal, a
plastic surgeon in Ann Arbor, doesn’t like that. He
is a Christian who thinks his faith has been hijacked and distorted by
extremists,…
j7uy5 | June 12, 2006This post is not interesting to specialists, but
may be of some use to
others. I'm writing it mostly because the matter has been
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/12/AR2006061200722.html">reported
in the mainstream press, and I think some clarification is in order.
Wellbutrin XL has been approved by the US FDA, "for the
prevention of major depressive episodes in patients with a history of
seasonal affective disorder."
In this post, I go over some of the history of the product, and try to
explain why the new indication is important, or not. Continue…
j7uy5 | June 11, 2006In 2004, a company called
rel="tag">Allerca started taking $250 deposits for
cats
that it intended to produce. It said that the cats would not
provoke allergies in humans. In a CNN
href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/10/27/biotechnology.cats/">article:
Cat allergies are caused by a potent protein secreted by the
cat's
skin and salivary glands. The allergen is so small it can remain
airborne for months.
Using "gene silencing" technology, Allerca is able to
suppress the production of the protein.
The
first breed of hypoallergenic cats will be
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
j7uy5 | June 11, 2006UCSF has issued a
href="http://pub.ucsf.edu/newsservices/releases/200606091/">press
release describing their trial of a vaccine,
href="http://www.nabi.com/pipeline/pipeline.php?id=3" rel="tag">NicVAX®
(Nicotine Conjugate Vaccine) , for treatment of nicotine addiction.
The product is made by attaching a nicotine derivative to a
carrier protein. This is necessary because nicotine itself is
too small to elicit an immune response.
When injected, the vaccine causes the immune system to produce
antibodies that bind to nicotine. Once bound, the nicotine is
unable to cross the
href="…
j7uy5 | June 10, 2006No, it's not a new concept car from Detroit. It is a website
that is designed to collect suggestions for the next edition of the
Diagnostical and Statistical Manual (DSM-V). It occurred to me to mention it
here, after reading a recent article in Seed
magazine.
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/serenity_now.php">Serenity
Now!, written by
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/author-stu-hutson/">Stu
Hutson, posted on
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/">June 8,
2006 12:14 AM, is in the category
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/brain-behavior…
j7uy5 | June 10, 2006
Memoirs are a big thing in the popular-book publishing arena these
days. It is a fad that is sure to pass. I intend to
hasten its passing with a micro-memoir of my own.
I am in Chicago. I have come to Chicago to visit the
University of Chicago, and to collect 23 of my chromosomes.
(They wandered off last September).
I have come from a spot near a decaying industrial city in the Midwest.
A minor item on my agenda for this trip, is to learn the
secrets of Prosperity from town where people still prosper.
My success in this venture is assured by my skill as a
Natural Observer of…
j7uy5 | June 9, 2006The ask-a-scienceblogger question for this week was submitted by a
reader, Jake Bryan, who comments on Science Blogs as "chezjake."
"Assuming that time and money were not obstacles,
what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would
you most like to explore? Why?
It did not take long for me to come up with an answer to this.
What I would most like to see researched intensively would
be: alternative energy sources. Continue reading below the
fold...
The reasons? First, I had to pick something outside of my own
discipline. Second, it seems that such a once-in-a-…
j7uy5 | June 8, 2006A news item that was displayed prominently on Google News
for a couple of days, which was picked up by hundreds of news outlets,
was an item about
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_Explosive_Disorder"
rel="tag">Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
One
example is
href="http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-rage06.html">here,
in the Chicago Sun-Times. This generated
a lot of blogging:
href="http://www.blogpulse.com/search?query=intermittent+explosive+disorder&offset=50&operator=and&start_date=&end_date=&sort=date&max_results=10">…