Cola Consumption and Muscle Problems: New Research Suggests Link
New research suggests drinking too much cola product is leading to a medical condition that has serious consequences.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1762970/cola_consumption_and_muscle_problems.html
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Cola Consumption and Muscle Problems: New Research Suggests Link
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Women look away more from abnormal babies
WASHINGTON - Puzzling new research suggests women have a harder time than men looking at babies with facial birth defects. It's a surprise finding. Psychiatrists from the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, who were studying perceptions of beauty, had expected women to spend more time than men cooing over pictures of extra-cute babies. Nope.
Instead, the small study being published Wednesday raises more questions than it can answer.
First the background: The McLean team already had studied men and women looking at photos of adults' faces on a computer screen. They rated facial beauty, and could do various keystrokes to watch the photos longer. A keystroke count showed men put three times more effort into watching beautiful women as women put into watching handsome men.
Lead researcher Dr. Igor Elman wondered what else might motivate women. Enter the new baby study.
This time 13 men and 14 women were shown 80 photos of babies, 30 of whom had abnormal facial features such as a cleft palate, Down syndrome or crossed eyes. Participants rated each baby's attractiveness on a scale of zero to 100, and used keystrokes to make the photo stay on the screen longer or disappear faster.
Women pressed the keys 2.5 times more than men to make photos of babies with the facial abnormalities disappear, researchers reported in PLoS One, a journal of the Public Library of Science. That's even though they rated those babies no less attractive than the men had.
"They had this subliminal motivation to get rid of the faces," said Elman, who questions whether "we're designed by nature to invest all the resources into healthy-looking kids."
Both genders spent equal time and effort looking at photos of the normal babies.
The study couldn't explain the gender disparity. Elman noted that previous work has linked child abandonment and neglect to abnormal appearance, and even asked if the finding might challenge the concept of unconditional maternal love.
That's too far-reaching a conclusion, cautioned Dr. Steven Grant of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the study.
The work is part of broader research into how we normally form attachments and what can make those attachments go awry, work that tests if what people say matches what they do.
"Common sense would tell you one thing," Grant said. "This doesn't fit with common sense. It raises a question."
Psychologists converge to study happiness
The Philadelphia Inquirer - June 21, 2009
Jun. 21--After months of gloomy economic news, Philadelphia has been, at least for a few days, the worldwide epicenter of a certain kind of positive thinking.
About 1,500 people who make their living thinking about what makes us happier and more emotionally successful have converged on Philadelphia for the First World Congress on Positive Psychology. The event opened Thursday and concludes today.
As one of the speakers, Karen Reivich, a psychologist who codirects the Penn Resiliency Project, puts it, this meeting is for those who study "not just what ails people but what allows people to flourish."
Flourishing may be setting the bar pretty high, given how many of us are seeking new jobs or barely holding onto the old ones. But the psychologists have some advice they say can make it easier to weather recession-related turmoil.
The meeting is the largest gathering ever of positive psychologists, who are members of a relatively new field. It landed in Philadelphia -- not exactly known for its positive attytood -- because University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman is here. Seligman, who started out studying depression and "learned helplessness" but later gravitated toward optimism and well-being, is considered positive psychology's founder.
Philadelphia may not seem all that optimistic "at any given moment," he said, but it is the place where a new nation was formed and that was clearly the work of positive thinkers.
Seligman, a former president of the American Psychological Association, said his retirement savings had taken a hit just as other people's did. Changes in fortune, he said, can shake what psychologists call positive emotions, the ones that feel good. But luckily, other factors that affect our sense of well-being do not have much to do with money: engagement in activities, finding meaning in life, and forming relationships with others.
These days, Seligman is thinking about those things and less about retirement funds.
It turns out that it is not precisely true that money does not buy happiness. Very poor people or countries are, in fact, less happy than those that are rich, said Ed Diener, a University of Illinois psychologist who is president of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA), the meeting's sponsor. However, to use an economics term, income has "marginal utility" when it comes to happiness; its effect on mood diminishes at higher levels.
Many who try to live on less money find they are soon just as happy as they were before, Diener said. "Obviously, our grandparents didn't make as much money as we did, and they were happy," he said.
There is good reason to cultivate positive emotions, he said. Evidence is mounting that good feelings improve health, relationships, and work performance. "Something that people don't know is that being generally happy is very good for you, not just because it feels good," Diener said, "but because it actually helps you function better."
On the other hand, work is an important contributor to well-being, the psychologists said, and losing a job is a big psychological blow. Michael Frese, who teaches at the University of Giessen in Germany and attended the Philadelphia conference, likes a fellow researcher's explanation: the "vitamin theory of work." The idea is that work provides structure and emotional experiences such as exercising control, socializing, and helping others that make people feel better about their lives. The amount they are paid is not a key factor, though low pay is likely to make people look for a different job, Frese said.
He studies how people's attitudes toward work help them thrive in their jobs or find new ones. He has found that people who take initiative in their jobs, shaping the work for themselves, can sometimes be seen as difficult employees but are also more successful and more likely to land on their feet if things go bad.
People who take personal initiative, he said, prepare "both for opportunities and potential problems" in the future. He has studied what happened to East Germans after unification, which led to widespread unemployment. "People who showed a high degree of initiative left companies more quickly while they were still intact," he said. "They migrated more."
Frese said a healthy way to cope with the kind of economic upheaval many Americans were experiencing now was to think of it as a learning experience. "What do you learn as a society so that it will not happen again," he said.
Reivich studies resilience, another key survival trait. She said she believed it, like optimism, could be taught and has developed programs for children that are now in use in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
"One of the things that resilient people do well is, they don't get stuck in habits of thinking," she said. They try to look at problems from all angles and focus on actions they can take to change their situation. She helps people learn how to combat a tendency to think all day about the worst things that could happen by arguing with their own "internal radio station" -- the thoughts we all hear in our heads. It also helps to spend some time each day giving thanks for the good things in your life.
Never underestimate the value of relationships with others when times are tough. "The one-sentence version of resilience and happiness in general is, 'Other people matter,' " Reivich said.
One could make a case that overly exuberant optimism helped get us in this mess in the first place. James Pawelski, executive director of the IPPA and a senior scholar at Penn's Positive Psychology Center, bristled at the notion of a Pollyanna-ish optimism or "happiology."
It is psychologically valuable to look for a silver lining in painful circumstances, he said, but positive psychologists aim to make the world better, not ignore warning signs. The goal is what he called "realistic optimism."
For decades, psychologists and psychiatrists focused on alleviating the pain of people with mental illnesses and other psychological problems. Most still do. Frese said the world's current problems gave positive psychologists an opportunity to think about what this new discipline, spawned in the midst of an economic boom, could contribute when more people are worried about meeting basic needs.
"In terms of evolution, I think it's quite clear that the negative factors are the more important ones," he said. "You don't want to die. That's the first thing you have to take care of."
Contact staff writer Stacey Burling at 215-854-4944 or sburling@phillynews.com.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Workplace romance is topic of research
Jun. 5--Romance in the workplace. It's a topic that's been written about in books, laughed about on sitcoms and dramatized on film.
But, surprisingly, there's been little clinical research on this hot topic, said Amy Nicole Salvaggio, assistant professor of industrial organizational psychology at the University of New Haven in West Haven. "It's very common," Salvaggio said of relationships between co-workers. "It's talked about in literature, TV and movies a lot. [But] it's not commonly studied."
She's hoping to change that. Salvaggio is seeking couples to participate in a study about how one's work life affects his or her love life -- and vice versa. She's looking to speak with couples who work together, and with couples who toil at separate workplaces. In both instances, she'll ask the couples to speak confidentially about their personal relationships and work attitudes.
Salvaggio began her research last year, while working at the University of Tulsa. She said she wanted to study the topic of work and relationships, because nearly everyone struggles with balancing his or her professional and personal lives. "Work and love do kind of make up the cornerstones of our existence," Salvaggio said.
She's particularly interested in talking to couples who are co-workers, mainly because it hasn't been studied much. That's probably because relationships, being so unpredictable, are considered a bit scary to those in the field of workplace psychology, Salvaggio
said.
"Workplace psychology focuses on rationality in the workplace," she said, adding that romantic relationships are inherently irrational, and can intimidate some researchers.
Yet, even though she plans to focus on couples who work together, she said even those with separate places of employment can feel the impact of their job on their relationship. This phenomenon is called "spillover," meaning that one's feelings about the job, both positive and negative, can leach into your personal life.
"We're looking at [answering questions such as] 'If you're satisfied with your job, does that relate to whether or not you're satisfied with your partner?" Salvaggio said.
Couples in the study will fill out an online survey that asks questions about both their job and their relationship. Salvaggio will then follow up with subjects three more times: at one month, three months and six months after the initial survey. Couples need not be married to participate -- they need only define themselves as being in a relationship. The study is also open to couples of all sexual orientation. All the information gathered through the survey will be kept confidential, and couples will not see each other's responses.
Ultimately, the goal is to help companies and couples navigate the intersection of work life and love life. Salvaggio said, just as couples struggle with a job or jobs that put stress on their relationship, employers suffer when a worker's romantic relationship hurts his or her job performance. "We want to offer some guidance beyond common sense," she said.
Salvaggio is seeking couples over the age of 22 who work more than 20 hours a week. Compensation for completion of the entire study will be in the form of gift cards valued at a total of $90 per couple Interested couples can reach Salvaggio at 932-7381 or at asalvaggio@newhaven.edu
Monday, June 15, 2009
Sleep can moderate emotional experiences
SEATTLE, Jun 12, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- The sleeping brain evaluates which emotional experiences should be remembered, U.S. researchers said.
The study also found the sooner sleep followed a learning experience the longer the memory lasted -- even for a mater of months. The study suggests memory improves if learning experiences are staggered across time.
Lead study author Jessica Payne of Harvard Medical School in Boston said they were surprised to find the sleeping brain -- in addition to seeing the enhancement of negative memories over neutral scenes -- showed selectivity within the emotional scenes themselves. Sleep served to consolidate into memory what seemed the most relevant, adaptive and useful about the scenes.
"It may be that the chemical and physiological aspects of sleep underlying memory consolidation are more effective if a particular memory is 'tagged' shortly prior to sleeping," Payne said in a statement.
The study included data from 44 college students who encoded scenes with neutral or negative objects on a neutral background and were tested on memory for objects and backgrounds 24 hours later.
Half were randomly assigned to train and be tested between the hours of 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., the other half between the hours of 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Four months later, participants were once again tested on their memory of the scenes.
The findings were presented at Sleep, the 23rd annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, in Seattle.
The Final Countdown
The Week Ahead
Monday (6/15)
The War on Terrorism
Video: Inside 9/11
HW: Reading Packet pages: 48-57 (review); 65-67;-79-89
Tuesday (6/16)
The War on Terrorism
Video: Inside 9/11
HW: Final Exam Readings
Wednesday (6/17)
FINAL: Blocks 3 and 4
Thursday (6/18)
FINAL: Block 1
LAST DAY OF SCHOOL OF 2008-2009 SCHOOL YEAR!!!!
Have a wonderful summer everyone! I hope to see you all in the fall and many of you in IB Psychology!
Thursday, June 11, 2009
By Request!
Intervention:
Bin Laden's 1996 Fatwa:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html
Bin Laden's 1996 Fatwa:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html
Monday, June 08, 2009
Celexa failed autism study; kids got side effects
Associated Press - June 01, 2009
CHICAGO - An antidepressant that is among the most popular kinds of medicine used for treating autism didn't work for most kids and caused nightmares and other side effects, new research found.
Results showed risks with Celexa outweighed any benefits in the largest published study of medication versus dummy pills for autism. That's according to the lead author, Dr. Bryan King, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington medical school.
The drug is not approved for treating autism. However, many doctors have prescribed it, thinking it might help prevent repetitive behaviors such as spinning, twirling and head-banging that are hallmark autism symptoms. Similar antidepressants have been shown to help treat repetitive actions in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
But in the autism study, Celexa worked no better than dummy pills. In fact, compared with kids on placebo, those on Celexa were more than twice as likely to develop repetitive behaviors, as well as other side effects including sleep problems and hyperactivity.
Celexa is in a class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, which are among the most widely used medicines given for autism.
The new research could "change this practice," said prominent Yale University autism researcher Dr. Fred Volkmar. He commented in an editorial released with the study Monday in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.
The results echo a separate study reported in February that showed a low-dose form of Prozac, another SSRI, also did not reduce repetitive behaviors in autism.
The overall global market for drug treatment in autism is at least $2 billion and SSRI antidepressants account for nearly 60 percent of that, the study authors said.
Celexa's maker, Forest Laboratories Inc., issued a statement saying the company "was not involved in this study and therefore cannot provide comment."
The National Institutes of Health paid for the research.
Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, said the new results underscore the difficulty in treating a condition with an uncertain cause and symptoms that range from mild to severe.
"We are still so challenged to come up with medications that can address core symptoms," she said, "largely because we still don't understand the biology of autism."
The study involved 149 autistic children aged 5 to 17 who were randomly given either up to 20 milligrams daily of Celexa for 12 weeks or dummy pills.
Doctors rated children's symptoms during treatment on a scale of 1 to 7, with high scores reflecting worsening symptoms. The rating method allowed doctors to evaluate improvements in repetitive actions and also other behaviors.
Only about one-third of children on Celexa showed substantial improvement; most showed little or no improvement or got worse.
Celexa is among antidepressants labeled with a warning about the potential for increasing risks for suicidal thoughts and behavior in children, but these symptoms didn't occur in the study.
About one-third of children on dummy pills also improved. King said reasons for that are uncertain. It could be they expected to get better with any kind of pill - the well-known "placebo effect." Or it could just have been a coincidence since autism symptoms tend to fluctuate over time.
That tendency might also explain why many kids on placebo also developed new or worse symptoms, he said.
CHICAGO - An antidepressant that is among the most popular kinds of medicine used for treating autism didn't work for most kids and caused nightmares and other side effects, new research found.
Results showed risks with Celexa outweighed any benefits in the largest published study of medication versus dummy pills for autism. That's according to the lead author, Dr. Bryan King, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Seattle Children's Hospital and the University of Washington medical school.
The drug is not approved for treating autism. However, many doctors have prescribed it, thinking it might help prevent repetitive behaviors such as spinning, twirling and head-banging that are hallmark autism symptoms. Similar antidepressants have been shown to help treat repetitive actions in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
But in the autism study, Celexa worked no better than dummy pills. In fact, compared with kids on placebo, those on Celexa were more than twice as likely to develop repetitive behaviors, as well as other side effects including sleep problems and hyperactivity.
Celexa is in a class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, which are among the most widely used medicines given for autism.
The new research could "change this practice," said prominent Yale University autism researcher Dr. Fred Volkmar. He commented in an editorial released with the study Monday in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.
The results echo a separate study reported in February that showed a low-dose form of Prozac, another SSRI, also did not reduce repetitive behaviors in autism.
The overall global market for drug treatment in autism is at least $2 billion and SSRI antidepressants account for nearly 60 percent of that, the study authors said.
Celexa's maker, Forest Laboratories Inc., issued a statement saying the company "was not involved in this study and therefore cannot provide comment."
The National Institutes of Health paid for the research.
Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, said the new results underscore the difficulty in treating a condition with an uncertain cause and symptoms that range from mild to severe.
"We are still so challenged to come up with medications that can address core symptoms," she said, "largely because we still don't understand the biology of autism."
The study involved 149 autistic children aged 5 to 17 who were randomly given either up to 20 milligrams daily of Celexa for 12 weeks or dummy pills.
Doctors rated children's symptoms during treatment on a scale of 1 to 7, with high scores reflecting worsening symptoms. The rating method allowed doctors to evaluate improvements in repetitive actions and also other behaviors.
Only about one-third of children on Celexa showed substantial improvement; most showed little or no improvement or got worse.
Celexa is among antidepressants labeled with a warning about the potential for increasing risks for suicidal thoughts and behavior in children, but these symptoms didn't occur in the study.
About one-third of children on dummy pills also improved. King said reasons for that are uncertain. It could be they expected to get better with any kind of pill - the well-known "placebo effect." Or it could just have been a coincidence since autism symptoms tend to fluctuate over time.
That tendency might also explain why many kids on placebo also developed new or worse symptoms, he said.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Goodbye Seniors
Make your decisions not out of fear but with courage.
Allow compassion to guide your heart and give hope to others.
At all stages of life, see your future as brighter than your past.
Allow compassion to guide your heart and give hope to others.
At all stages of life, see your future as brighter than your past.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The Weeks Ahead!
Monday (6/1)
1. D-Day - Video
2. D-Day to Victory in Europe!
--Notes
HW: Reading: Hitler's suicide
Tuesday (6/2)
1. War in the Pacific: 1944-1945
--Notes
--Video clips
HW: NONE
Wednesday (6/3)
1. Video: Victory in the Pacific***KEY VIDEO
HW: Readings for debate
Thursday (6/4)
1. Socratic Seminar: The Atomic Bomb
HW: NONE
Friday (6/5)
Prep for Exam II
Current Events
HW: Study: EXAM MONDAY!
1. D-Day - Video
2. D-Day to Victory in Europe!
--Notes
HW: Reading: Hitler's suicide
Tuesday (6/2)
1. War in the Pacific: 1944-1945
--Notes
--Video clips
HW: NONE
Wednesday (6/3)
1. Video: Victory in the Pacific***KEY VIDEO
HW: Readings for debate
Thursday (6/4)
1. Socratic Seminar: The Atomic Bomb
HW: NONE
Friday (6/5)
Prep for Exam II
Current Events
HW: Study: EXAM MONDAY!
Friday, May 29, 2009
WWII: Extra Credit Movie Options
Watch ANY of the below movies and write an analysis of the theme and plot with respect to the greater context of WWII (1 page minimum in length - TYPED). In order to get credit YOU MUST have a PARENT OR GUARDIAN SIGN THE VIDEO CONSENT FORM ISSUED IN CLASS!!!!
OPTION 1: THE THIN RED LINE
OPTION 2: VALKYRIE
OPTION 3: SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
OPTION 1: THE THIN RED LINE
OPTION 2: VALKYRIE
OPTION 3: SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Girls Hit by Eating Disorders Up 47% ; Skinny Models to Blame for Rise
Sunday Mirror - May 24, 2009
SOARING numbers of young girls are being treated in hospital for eating disorders.
Cases of bulimia and anorexia among girls under 18 have leapt by 47 per cent from 562 in 2004 to 825 last year.
Worryingly, there has also been a 25 per cent rise in girls UNDER NINE being treated for eating disorders.
The new figures also show the number of women needing hospital treatment has risen by 25 per cent to 1,740 compared with 1,398 in 2004. The number of men being treated for eating disorders has also gone up, rising to 226 last year from 183 in 2004.
Health experts blame the increasing pressure on young people to stay thin for the rising number of anorexia and bulimia cases. In a recent poll of 3,000 teenagers 75 per cent said they felt they needed to lose weight after looking at pictures of skinny stars such as Kate Moss and Nicole Richie.
Susan Ringwood, chief executive of eating disorder charity Beat, said: "We are very concerned by these figures. We have heard of cases of people being told by doctors 'wait and see and come back later'. And these people get very, very ill before they get any help.
"Eating disorders are a serious psychiatric condition. It's worrying that young people who are suffering are not getting the appropriate treatment until they are dangerously ill."
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb, who obtained the figures, said: "Children shouldn't be getting to the stage where they are so ill they need to be hospitalised before they get help."
I WAS FIVE STONE AGED 15
ALI Valenzuela owes her life to treatment for anorexia - but says not enough is done for sufferers.
At the worst point, when she was 17, her weight fell to FIVE STONE and she only ate two bits of fruit a day.
Ali, 20, who says she is now a safe weight for her height, 5ft 7ins, said: "If I hadn't gone to hospital I wouldn't be here today.
"I knew I looked horrible and people used to stare. But I had no control over it."
She had to beg for funding for private care because no treatment was available on the NHS.
When she got a grant, she had to travel 100 miles from her home in Swansea to a clinic in Bristol.
Ali wants the Government to do more for anorexics and has written a book, Weighing It Up, about her illness.
More than 90,000 children and adults in the UK were diagnosed with an eating disorder last year. But campaigners estimate that 1.3million people are currently battling an eating disorder yet seek no help and choose to suffer in silence instead.
SOARING numbers of young girls are being treated in hospital for eating disorders.
Cases of bulimia and anorexia among girls under 18 have leapt by 47 per cent from 562 in 2004 to 825 last year.
Worryingly, there has also been a 25 per cent rise in girls UNDER NINE being treated for eating disorders.
The new figures also show the number of women needing hospital treatment has risen by 25 per cent to 1,740 compared with 1,398 in 2004. The number of men being treated for eating disorders has also gone up, rising to 226 last year from 183 in 2004.
Health experts blame the increasing pressure on young people to stay thin for the rising number of anorexia and bulimia cases. In a recent poll of 3,000 teenagers 75 per cent said they felt they needed to lose weight after looking at pictures of skinny stars such as Kate Moss and Nicole Richie.
Susan Ringwood, chief executive of eating disorder charity Beat, said: "We are very concerned by these figures. We have heard of cases of people being told by doctors 'wait and see and come back later'. And these people get very, very ill before they get any help.
"Eating disorders are a serious psychiatric condition. It's worrying that young people who are suffering are not getting the appropriate treatment until they are dangerously ill."
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb, who obtained the figures, said: "Children shouldn't be getting to the stage where they are so ill they need to be hospitalised before they get help."
I WAS FIVE STONE AGED 15
ALI Valenzuela owes her life to treatment for anorexia - but says not enough is done for sufferers.
At the worst point, when she was 17, her weight fell to FIVE STONE and she only ate two bits of fruit a day.
Ali, 20, who says she is now a safe weight for her height, 5ft 7ins, said: "If I hadn't gone to hospital I wouldn't be here today.
"I knew I looked horrible and people used to stare. But I had no control over it."
She had to beg for funding for private care because no treatment was available on the NHS.
When she got a grant, she had to travel 100 miles from her home in Swansea to a clinic in Bristol.
Ali wants the Government to do more for anorexics and has written a book, Weighing It Up, about her illness.
More than 90,000 children and adults in the UK were diagnosed with an eating disorder last year. But campaigners estimate that 1.3million people are currently battling an eating disorder yet seek no help and choose to suffer in silence instead.
Monday, May 25, 2009
The Week Ahead w/Headlines
Tuesday (5/26)
Propaganda Posters!
--Examples
--Group work
HW: WWII Exam 1 Review: IDs: Appeasement, Blitzkrieg, Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa
Wednesday (5/27)
Dr. Sues Goes to War
WWII Review
HW: Study IDs
Thursday (5/28)
WWII Exam I
HW: NONE
Friday (5/29)
WWII: North Africa, Allied Bombing of Europe, and the Battle of Stalingrad
--Notes and Video clip
Current Events
HW: TBA
PSYCHOLOGY NEWS:
Arts appear to play role in brain development
May 18--For years, school systems across the nation dropped the arts to concentrate on getting struggling students to pass tests in reading and math. Yet now, a growing body of brain research suggests that teaching the arts may be good for students across all disciplines.
Scientists are now looking at, for instance, whether students at an arts high school who study music or drawing have brains that allow them to focus more intensely or do better in the classroom.
Washington County schools Superintendent Betty Morgan would have liked to have had some of that basic research in her hands when she began building a coalition for an arts high school in Hagerstown. The business community and school principals worked together, and the school will open this summer, but even at its groundbreaking a man objecting to the money spent on the school held up a sign of protest reading "Big Note$ Wrong Music."
Scientists and educators aware of the gap between basic research and the school systems are beginning to share findings, such as at this month's seminar on the brain and the arts held at Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum.
The event was sponsored by the new Neuro-Education Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University, a center designed to bridge that gap.
Brain research in the past several years is just beginning to uncover some startling ideas about how students learn. First came the proof, some years ago, that our brains do not lose brain cells as we get older, but are always capable of growing.
Now neuroscientists are investigating how training students in the arts may change the structure of their brains and the way they think. They are asking: Does putting a violin in the hands of an elementary school student help him to do math better? Will learning to dance or paint improve a child's spacial ability or ability to learn to read?
Research in those areas, Harvard professor Jerome Kagan said, is "as deserving of a clinical trial as a drug for cancer that has not yet been shown to be effective."
There aren't many conclusions yet that can be translated into the classroom, but there is an emerging interdisciplinary field between education and neuroscience. Like Hopkins, Harvard also has created a center to study learning and the brain.
Much of the research into the arts has centered on music and the brain. One researcher studying students who go to an arts high school found a correlation between those who were trained in music and their ability to do geometry. Yet another four-year study, being conducted by Ellen Winner of Boston College and Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard, is looking at the effects playing the piano or the violin has on students who are in elementary school.
Winner said she was quite skeptical of claims that schools that had introduced the arts had seen an increase in test scores and a generally better school climate. She had previously looked at those claims and found they couldn't be backed up by research.
However, she is in the midst of a four-year study of elementary students that has shown some effects: One group is learning an instrument and another is not. "It is the first study to demonstrate brain plasticity in young children related to music playing," Schlaug said.
The study Winner is working on has shown that children who receive a small amount of training -- as little as half an hour of lessons a week and 10 minutes of practice a day -- do have structural changes in their brains that can be measured. And those students, Winner said, were better at tests that required them to use their fingers with dexterity.
About 15 months after the study began, students who played the instrument were not better at math or reading, although the researchers are questioning whether they have assessments that are sensitive enough to measure the changes. They will continue the study for several more years.
Charles Limb, a Johns Hopkins doctor and a jazz musician, studied jazz musicians by using imaging technology to take pictures of their brains as they improvised. He found that they allowed their creativity to flow by shutting down areas that regulated inhibition and self-control. So are the most creative people able to shut down those areas of the brain?
Most of the new research is focusing on the networks of the brain that are involved in specific tasks, said Michael Posner, a researcher at the University of Oregon. Posner has studied the effects of music on attention. What he found, he said, was that in those students who showed motivation and creativity, training in the arts helped develop their attention and their intelligence. The next great focus in this area, he said, is on proving the connection that most scientists believe exists between the study of music and math ability.
The imaging is now so advanced that scientists can already see the difference in the brain networks of those who study a string instrument and those who study the piano intensely.
The brain research, while moving quickly by some measures, is still painfully slow for educators who would like answers today. Morgan, the Washington County schools chief, said some research did help her support the drive to build the Barbara Ingram School for the Arts in Hagerstown.
Mariale Hardiman, the former principal of Roland Park Elementary/Middle School, was once one of those principals who focused a lot of attention on reading and math scores. But she saw what integrating the arts into classrooms could do for students, she said, and she then began her own research into the subject.
She is now the co-director of the Hopkins Neuro-Education Initiative. She said there are a myriad of questions that could be answered in the research that is just starting, but there are two she would like to see approached: Do children who learn academic content through the arts tend to hold onto that knowledge longer? And are schools squeezing creativity out of children by controlling so much of their school day?
Even without research though, Kagan of Harvard said there is ample evidence of the value of an arts education because so many children who aren't good at academics can gain self-confidence through the arts.
"The argument for an arts education is based not on sentimentality but on pragmatism," he said. "If an arts program only helped the 7 million children in the bottom quartile, the dropout rate would drop."
Vitamin D in fish makes it 'brain food'
United Press International - May 22, 2009
WARSAW, England, May 22, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Mothers used to call fish "brain food," but researchers in Britain say fish and sunshine really do help cerebral cognitive function.
University of Manchester scientists, in collaboration with colleagues from other European facilities, compared the cognitive performance of more than 3,000 men ages 40-79 years at eight centers in Europe.
Dr. David Lee of Manchester's School of Translational Medicine found that men with higher levels of vitamin D -- synthesized in the skin following sun exposure but also found in certain foods such as oily fish -- performed consistently better in a simple and sensitive neuropsychological test that assesses an individual's attention and speed of information processing.
"Previous studies exploring the relationship between vitamin D and cognitive performance in adults have produced inconsistent findings but we observed a significant, independent association between a slower information processing speed and lower levels of vitamin D," Lee said in a statement.
"The main strengths of our study are that it is based on a large population sample and took into account potential interfering factors, such as depression, season and levels of physical activity."
The association between increased vitamin D and faster information processing was more significant in men age 60 and older although the biological reasons for this remain unclear, Lee said.
The findings are published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
Propaganda Posters!
--Examples
--Group work
HW: WWII Exam 1 Review: IDs: Appeasement, Blitzkrieg, Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa
Wednesday (5/27)
Dr. Sues Goes to War
WWII Review
HW: Study IDs
Thursday (5/28)
WWII Exam I
HW: NONE
Friday (5/29)
WWII: North Africa, Allied Bombing of Europe, and the Battle of Stalingrad
--Notes and Video clip
Current Events
HW: TBA
PSYCHOLOGY NEWS:
Arts appear to play role in brain development
May 18--For years, school systems across the nation dropped the arts to concentrate on getting struggling students to pass tests in reading and math. Yet now, a growing body of brain research suggests that teaching the arts may be good for students across all disciplines.
Scientists are now looking at, for instance, whether students at an arts high school who study music or drawing have brains that allow them to focus more intensely or do better in the classroom.
Washington County schools Superintendent Betty Morgan would have liked to have had some of that basic research in her hands when she began building a coalition for an arts high school in Hagerstown. The business community and school principals worked together, and the school will open this summer, but even at its groundbreaking a man objecting to the money spent on the school held up a sign of protest reading "Big Note$ Wrong Music."
Scientists and educators aware of the gap between basic research and the school systems are beginning to share findings, such as at this month's seminar on the brain and the arts held at Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum.
The event was sponsored by the new Neuro-Education Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University, a center designed to bridge that gap.
Brain research in the past several years is just beginning to uncover some startling ideas about how students learn. First came the proof, some years ago, that our brains do not lose brain cells as we get older, but are always capable of growing.
Now neuroscientists are investigating how training students in the arts may change the structure of their brains and the way they think. They are asking: Does putting a violin in the hands of an elementary school student help him to do math better? Will learning to dance or paint improve a child's spacial ability or ability to learn to read?
Research in those areas, Harvard professor Jerome Kagan said, is "as deserving of a clinical trial as a drug for cancer that has not yet been shown to be effective."
There aren't many conclusions yet that can be translated into the classroom, but there is an emerging interdisciplinary field between education and neuroscience. Like Hopkins, Harvard also has created a center to study learning and the brain.
Much of the research into the arts has centered on music and the brain. One researcher studying students who go to an arts high school found a correlation between those who were trained in music and their ability to do geometry. Yet another four-year study, being conducted by Ellen Winner of Boston College and Gottfried Schlaug of Harvard, is looking at the effects playing the piano or the violin has on students who are in elementary school.
Winner said she was quite skeptical of claims that schools that had introduced the arts had seen an increase in test scores and a generally better school climate. She had previously looked at those claims and found they couldn't be backed up by research.
However, she is in the midst of a four-year study of elementary students that has shown some effects: One group is learning an instrument and another is not. "It is the first study to demonstrate brain plasticity in young children related to music playing," Schlaug said.
The study Winner is working on has shown that children who receive a small amount of training -- as little as half an hour of lessons a week and 10 minutes of practice a day -- do have structural changes in their brains that can be measured. And those students, Winner said, were better at tests that required them to use their fingers with dexterity.
About 15 months after the study began, students who played the instrument were not better at math or reading, although the researchers are questioning whether they have assessments that are sensitive enough to measure the changes. They will continue the study for several more years.
Charles Limb, a Johns Hopkins doctor and a jazz musician, studied jazz musicians by using imaging technology to take pictures of their brains as they improvised. He found that they allowed their creativity to flow by shutting down areas that regulated inhibition and self-control. So are the most creative people able to shut down those areas of the brain?
Most of the new research is focusing on the networks of the brain that are involved in specific tasks, said Michael Posner, a researcher at the University of Oregon. Posner has studied the effects of music on attention. What he found, he said, was that in those students who showed motivation and creativity, training in the arts helped develop their attention and their intelligence. The next great focus in this area, he said, is on proving the connection that most scientists believe exists between the study of music and math ability.
The imaging is now so advanced that scientists can already see the difference in the brain networks of those who study a string instrument and those who study the piano intensely.
The brain research, while moving quickly by some measures, is still painfully slow for educators who would like answers today. Morgan, the Washington County schools chief, said some research did help her support the drive to build the Barbara Ingram School for the Arts in Hagerstown.
Mariale Hardiman, the former principal of Roland Park Elementary/Middle School, was once one of those principals who focused a lot of attention on reading and math scores. But she saw what integrating the arts into classrooms could do for students, she said, and she then began her own research into the subject.
She is now the co-director of the Hopkins Neuro-Education Initiative. She said there are a myriad of questions that could be answered in the research that is just starting, but there are two she would like to see approached: Do children who learn academic content through the arts tend to hold onto that knowledge longer? And are schools squeezing creativity out of children by controlling so much of their school day?
Even without research though, Kagan of Harvard said there is ample evidence of the value of an arts education because so many children who aren't good at academics can gain self-confidence through the arts.
"The argument for an arts education is based not on sentimentality but on pragmatism," he said. "If an arts program only helped the 7 million children in the bottom quartile, the dropout rate would drop."
Vitamin D in fish makes it 'brain food'
United Press International - May 22, 2009
WARSAW, England, May 22, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Mothers used to call fish "brain food," but researchers in Britain say fish and sunshine really do help cerebral cognitive function.
University of Manchester scientists, in collaboration with colleagues from other European facilities, compared the cognitive performance of more than 3,000 men ages 40-79 years at eight centers in Europe.
Dr. David Lee of Manchester's School of Translational Medicine found that men with higher levels of vitamin D -- synthesized in the skin following sun exposure but also found in certain foods such as oily fish -- performed consistently better in a simple and sensitive neuropsychological test that assesses an individual's attention and speed of information processing.
"Previous studies exploring the relationship between vitamin D and cognitive performance in adults have produced inconsistent findings but we observed a significant, independent association between a slower information processing speed and lower levels of vitamin D," Lee said in a statement.
"The main strengths of our study are that it is based on a large population sample and took into account potential interfering factors, such as depression, season and levels of physical activity."
The association between increased vitamin D and faster information processing was more significant in men age 60 and older although the biological reasons for this remain unclear, Lee said.
The findings are published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Week Ahead
Monday (5/18)
1. Pearl Harbor - December 7th, 1941
2. The Final Solution
--Readings
HW: Complete Reading
Tuesday (5/19)
1. The Final Solution
--Share readings - group
2. Discuss Readings - class
HW: Socratic Seminar Readings
Wednesday (5/20)
1. The Final Solution
--Video
2. Prep for Socratic Seminar
HW: Prep for Seminar
Thursday (5/21)
The Final Solution
--Socratic Seminar
HW: None
Friday (5/22)
The Final Solution
--Memories of the Camps - Video (WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC)
Current Events
HW: TBA
1. Pearl Harbor - December 7th, 1941
2. The Final Solution
--Readings
HW: Complete Reading
Tuesday (5/19)
1. The Final Solution
--Share readings - group
2. Discuss Readings - class
HW: Socratic Seminar Readings
Wednesday (5/20)
1. The Final Solution
--Video
2. Prep for Socratic Seminar
HW: Prep for Seminar
Thursday (5/21)
The Final Solution
--Socratic Seminar
HW: None
Friday (5/22)
The Final Solution
--Memories of the Camps - Video (WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC)
Current Events
HW: TBA
Sunday, May 17, 2009
IB Psychology Exam
Here is a link to the documentary about medicating children: The Medicated Child.
To aid you, I wrote a brief summary of the video while trying to integrate some of what we went over in class. I wrote the review as if I was arguing from the standpoint of the documentary's authors.
CAUTION: 1. This has not been edited/proofed, I simply wrote it on the quick so don't hold typos against me! 2. This essay is an argument (as basically offered in the video), therefore you can most readily disagree with all or parts of it! Integrate your own analysis and ideas!
I hope it helps some!
Click here for the Documentary Summary and Review
To aid you, I wrote a brief summary of the video while trying to integrate some of what we went over in class. I wrote the review as if I was arguing from the standpoint of the documentary's authors.
CAUTION: 1. This has not been edited/proofed, I simply wrote it on the quick so don't hold typos against me! 2. This essay is an argument (as basically offered in the video), therefore you can most readily disagree with all or parts of it! Integrate your own analysis and ideas!
I hope it helps some!
Click here for the Documentary Summary and Review
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Focused, social kids, better adult health
BOSTON, May 7, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Children, especially girls, who can stay focused and don't sweat the small stuff have a better shot at good health in adulthood, U.S. researchers said.
The study, published in the journal Health Psychology, found that for all the participants, superior attention spans and having a more positive outlook in youth affected health the most.
"Certain characteristics already evident early in life are likely to spark positive or negative emotions, and also influence biological and behavioral responses to stress," lead author Laura D. Kubzansky of the Harvard School of Public Health said in a statement. "Supporting this idea, we found that children who were able to stay focused on a task and react less negatively to situations at age 7 reported better general health and fewer illnesses 30 years later."
Kubzansky and co-authors tracked 569 individuals from the National Collaborative Perinatal Project from age 7 to their mid-30s. Trained observers rated the 7-year-olds on 15 different behaviors and these behaviors were assigned to three different personality attributes: the ability to stay focused on a task and persist in solving a problem, the tendency to react negatively to situations and the tendency toward shyness, acting withdrawn and having difficulty communicating.
The study, published in the journal Health Psychology, found that for all the participants, superior attention spans and having a more positive outlook in youth affected health the most.
"Certain characteristics already evident early in life are likely to spark positive or negative emotions, and also influence biological and behavioral responses to stress," lead author Laura D. Kubzansky of the Harvard School of Public Health said in a statement. "Supporting this idea, we found that children who were able to stay focused on a task and react less negatively to situations at age 7 reported better general health and fewer illnesses 30 years later."
Kubzansky and co-authors tracked 569 individuals from the National Collaborative Perinatal Project from age 7 to their mid-30s. Trained observers rated the 7-year-olds on 15 different behaviors and these behaviors were assigned to three different personality attributes: the ability to stay focused on a task and persist in solving a problem, the tendency to react negatively to situations and the tendency toward shyness, acting withdrawn and having difficulty communicating.
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