Friday, July 31, 2009

New Links Between Lucid Dreaming And Psychosis Could Revive Dream Therapy In Psychiatry

▪ Similarities in brain activity during lucid dreaming and psychosis suggest that dream therapy may be useful in psychiatric treatment
▪ This is strengthened by the potential evolutionary relationship between dreams and psychosis
▪ Lucid dreaming creates distinct patterns of electrical activity in the brain that have similarities to the patterns made by psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia
⁃ offers potential for new therapeutic routes based on how healthy dreaming differs from the unstable states associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders.

"In the field of psychiatry, the interest in patients' dreams has progressively fallen out of both clinical practice and research. But this new work seems to show that we may be able to make comparisons between lucid dreaming and some psychiatric conditions that involve an abnormal dissociation of consciousness while awake, such as psychosis, depersonalisation and pseudoseizures." - Silvio Scarone, from the Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan, Italy.

▪ the previously discredited idea of treating some conditions with dream therapy has attracted interest from clinicians.
⁃ example is people suffering from nightmares can sometimes be treated by training them to dream lucidly so they can consciously wake up.

"neuroscience investigators could explore how to extend their work to psychiatric
conditions, using approaches from sleep research to interpret data from acute
psychotic and dissociated states of the brain-mind."
▪ The existence of such psychotic conditions may be rooted in the evolutionary role of dreams, where dreaming is thought to have emerged to enable early humans to rehearse responses to the many dangerous events they faced in real life.
▪ the idea that paranoid delusions and other hallucinatory phenomena occur when the dissociative dreaming state involving replay of threatening situations is carried through into wakefulness.
▪ "Exposure to real threatening events supposedly activates the dream system, so that it produces simulations that are realistic rehearsals of threatening events in terms of perception and behaviour,"
▪ may also have a role in the learning process
Contents are added while you are awake and integrated with the automatic program of dream consciousness during sleep
⁃ works with observations that daytime learning is consolidated by night-time sleeping

European Science Foundation. "New Links Between Lucid Dreaming And Psychosis Could Revive Dream Therapy In Psychiatry." ScienceDaily 29 July 2009. 31 July 2009

new finding that WEATHER may not only AFFECT mood, but ALSO COGNITION

"We found that among participants with depression, low exposure to sunlight was associated with a significantly higher predicted probability of cognitive impairment.
This relationship remained significant after adjustment for season.



"This new finding that
WEATHER
may not only affect mood, but also cognition
significant implications for the treatment of depression
, particularly seasonal affective disorder"


"Discovering the environment's impact on cognitive functioning within the context of seasonal disorders may lead not only to
better understanding of the disorders, but also to the

development of targeted interventions
to enhance everyday functioning and quality of life".




Effect of sunlight exposure on cognitive function among depressed and non-depressed participants: a REGARDS cross-sectional study
Shia T Kent, Leslie A McClure, William L Crosson, Donna K Arnett, Virginia G Wadley, Nalini Sathiakumar
Environmental Health 2009, 8:34 (28 July 2009)


BACKGROUND -
Possible physiological causes for the effect of sunlight on mood are through serotonin and melatonin pathways, as well as through cerebral blood flow. Cognitive function involved in these same pathways may potentially be affected by sunlight exposure. We evaluated whether the amount of sunlight exposure (i.e. insolation) affects cognitive function and examined the effect of season on this relationship.

METHODS - We obtained insolation data for residential regions of 16,800 participants from a national cohort study of blacks and whites, aged 45+. Cognitive impairment was assessed using a validated six-item screener questionnaire and depression status was assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Logistic regression was used to find whether same-day or two-week average sunlight exposure was related to cognitive function and whether this relationship differed by depression status.

RESULTS - A dose-response relationship was found between sunlight exposure and cognitive function, and this relationship differed by depression status. Among depressed participants, lower levels of sunlight were associated with impaired cognitive status (odds ratio=2.58; 95% CI 1.43-6.69). While both season and sunlight were correlated with cognitive function, a significant relation remained between each of them and cognitive impairment after controlling for their joint effects.

CONCLUSIONS The study found an association between decreased exposure to sunlight and increased probability of cognitive impairment using a novel data source. We are the first to examine the effects of two-week exposure to sunlight on cognition, as well as the first to look at sunlight's effects on cognition in a large cohort study.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Buckminster Fuller


"For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. Only ten years ago the 'more with less' technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option of becoming enduringly successful." - Buckminster Fuller, 1980.


Buckminster Fuller was probably one of the first futurists and global thinkers. He is the one who coined the term "Spaceship Earth"

Fuller devoted much of his life to resolving the gap between the sciences and the humanities, which he believed was preventing society from taking a comprehensive view of the world.

Doing «more with less» was his credo

«With the highest aeronautical engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful.» Harnessing the positive potential of new technology for the greater good was a key aspect of Fuller‘s outlook.
Although Fuller believed in utilizing the latest technology, much of his work developed from his inquiry into «how nature builds»
Fuller was committed to the physical exploration and visual presentation of his ideas.
Fuller thought to inspire people with his ideas for an abundant and equitable future - a vision he felt was absolutely attainable.
But he placed the ultimate responsibility for achieving that goal on us all.


«Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eights of the time. Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time. It‘s time we gave this some thought.» - Buckminster Fuller (I Seem to be a Verb, 1970)

World Beard and Moustache Championship


http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/

a ma zing!

FAMILY (n.)

DEFINITIONS OF FAMILY
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Family, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau:
"A family includes a householder and one or more people living in the same household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption. All people in a household who are related to the householder are regarded as members of his or her family. A family household may contain people not related to the householder, but those people are not included as part of the householder’s family in census tabulations. Thus, the number of family households is equal to the number of families, but family households may include more members than do families. A household can contain only one family for purposes of census tabulations. Not all households contain families since a household may comprise a group of unrelated people or one person living alone."
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Family, as defined by a 1970s Long Island, New York housing code (upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974):
"One or more persons related by blood, adoption, or marriage, living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit, exclusive of household servants. A number of persons but not exceeding two (2) living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit though not related by blood, adoption, or marriage shall be deemed to constitute a family."

Three Views of "Family," by the U.S. Supreme Court:
1. a traditional “nuclear family” of two parents and their children, and where the parents are presumed to be acting in the best interests of their children. In such a family, there is no need to give the children their own voice – even when parents do such things as institutionalize their children;
2. an extended-kind model of family made up of a community of parents, siblings, grandparents and other relatives which should be recognized as a primary family, even if the blood-ties are not as strong as a nuclear family; and
3. an individualist model where family members are fairly autonomous and that individuality should be respected.

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Family, as defined by Statistics Canada:
"[A] now-married couple, a common-law couple or a lone-parent with a child or youth who is under the age of 25 and who does not have his or her own spouse or child living in the household. Now-married couples and common-law couples may or may not have such children and youth living with them. Now-married couples and common-law couples are classified as husband-wife families and the partners in the couple are classified as spouses." (not anymore)
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Family, as defined by the Netherlands Cabinet:
"a social unit where one or more children are being cared for and/or brought up."
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As long as you're under my roof . . . .
The National Statistical Service of Greece counts all the people who live under the same roof as a family – even if they aren't related.
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House -
Similarly, the Zinacantecos of southern Mexico don't have a word that is equivalent to our concept of family as a parent-child relationship. Instead, their basic social unit is a "house" and that can mean just one or as many as 20 people who live there.
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Oxford English Dictionary
first defines a family as the servants of a house, or the household. The second definition is everyone who lives in a house or under one head. It isn't until the third definition that it defines family as a "group of persons consisting of the parents and their children, whether actually living together or not."
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Guo + Jia
The Chinese word for "nation" consists of the combination of two other characters: "guo"country and "jia"family.
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It doesn't just take a village – it is one –
Up until the mid-1800s, a Japanese family unit was considered those who worked together in a single village.
In 1889, Japanese law defined a family to be based on blood lineage, with a father as head of the household, passing on down to his eldest son. Since the determining factor was paternal blood relations, that included polygamous families: all children who had the same father were considered to be in the same family.

uchi:
The contemporary Japanese term for family, following post-World War II changes in the nation's laws and society. It may refer to a nuclear family of parents and unmarried children, but it can also mean a household as a unit of production or consumption.
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The Arabic equivalent to American concept of family is: ‘aila.
The root of that word means: “to support.”
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Family, as described by George Santayana:
"one of nature's masterpieces."
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* Family, as described by Kayla Moryoussef - to come.
Current information on this working definition suggests that it will be constructed on the basis of LOVE as the basic unit, and Humanity as the ultimate family. The definition will be intended as an example equation using Love as a constant, and Love=Humanity as the solution.
Given that the variables for the equation are profoundly infinite, the purpose of the definition will act as an invitation to participate in collecting as diverse and as many definitions as possible - to the point that the 'known' 'traditional' 'official' definitions implode into oblivion. At which point the universal collection of definitions is reduced back to the original common denominator, so that all that is left to define family is LOVE=FAMILY=HUMANITY.

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there's more! a lot more...
guess what i just found --
THE FACTBOOK:
EYE-OPENING MEMOS ON EVERYTHING FAMILY

an organized collection of research on family - memo after memo on various topics, synthesizing facts, statistical data and opinions - 100 of these memos online. They vary in length from a single page to over 20 pages.
Those memos are the core of
The Factbook.
The Factbook draws from over 600 different source materials and is several hundred pages long.
i suggest starting with the "How To Use This Site" page

i'm screwed. in the best way possible

Friday, July 24, 2009

OH MY GOD - amazing & ampersand!


marc johns is my new hero

seriously, i did.



thank you http://acafourek.tumblr.com/

to my favourite person(s)

born to run

most.
happy - making
ever.

(well, for now)

who is the cutest?

http://www.whosthecutest.com/

one screwed weiner

oopsy

"weinermobile crash"

why flashmobs are AMAZING #1276872

AMAZING

TOLD!

this is what happens when you park in a non-parking zone
(and you subsequently park in the way of hilarious people)

cupcake ninjas

best.
cupcakes.

ever.

(well, for now)

When the sun don’t shine

best.
umbrellas.
ever.

(well, for now)




THERE ARE MORE HERE

Sunday, July 12, 2009