Lit

"Sexual pleasure among young adults (ages 18-26) is linked to healthy psychological and social development, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study is the first to use a representative population sample of heterosexuals to find a relationship between key developmental assets and sexual pleasure." - Lit

Then somebody should research for people aged 26 & above! - Avinash

xD haha! - Franc, a rememberer

"I've found that assertiveness is the ability to ask for what you need while aggressiveness refers more to doing things without regard to how they affect others. In the world of leadership and workplace politics assertiveness is a highly desirable characteristic. It enables leaders to ask for what they need and make their position clear without being a jerk. Think about the following assertiveness tips and ask yourself how many you practice every day. 1. Tell people what you need and let them do the same. 2. Be specific about what you want to happen. 3. Don't get attached to only one outcome (yours). 4. Try not to crush or minimize other people's perspectives. 5. Invite people to comment on how your needs affect them. 6. Always be kind and remain calm when asking for what you need. 7. Allow other people the same amount of time to describe their needs. 8. Tell people what you need early in the conversation rather than after the fact. 9. Allow others to assert themselves. 10. Compromise on your needs and meet people halfway. Being assertive is not about behaving like a jerk. It's about letting people know where you stand and what you need in a kind, direct and flexible way and then being willing to work with them to find resolutions that work for everyone. So many problems arise in the workplace because people get into power struggles, become entrenched in a single position and step all over each other. Being assertive allows you to express your views and also encourage others to do the same." - Lit

"Sometimes we forget the past and at other times we distort it; some disturbing memories haunt us for years. Yet we also rely on memory to perform an astonishing variety of tasks in our everyday lives. Recalling conversations with friends or recollecting family vacations; remembering appointments and errands we need to run; calling up words that allow us to speak and under stand others; remembering foods we like and dislike; acquiring the knowledge needed for a new job -- all depend, in one way or another, on memory. Memory plays such a pervasive role in our daily lives that we often take it for granted until an incident of forgetting or distortion demands our attention." - Lit

"Link to the website to read more on 'seven different ways that memory can mess with your head and your life, and ways to identify them.' By Daniel Schacter" - Lit

"Risk, probability, chance, coincidence—they play a significant role in the way we make decisions about health, education, relationships and money. But where does this data come from and what does it really mean? How does the brain find patterns and where can these patterns take us? When should we ditch the data and go with our gut?... http://livestre.am/jSm ...watch the discussion that will demystify the chancy side of life." - Lit

The selected panelists look very interesting: http://worldsciencefestival.com/events... -- as the individual transcripts or presentation videos become available, kindly keep us posted. - Adriano

My gut says it will be good, but the data is inconclusive :-) - Todd Hoff

"Building on a decade of discoveries concerning obesity’s role in Type 2 diabetes and related metabolic disorders, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have uncovered surprising roles for lipid and calcium-processing abnormalities in the liver. By correcting these problems in a mouse model, the team reversed high blood-glucose levels, insulin resistance and other metabolic hallmarks of Type 2 diabetes...The chain of molecular events by which obesity disrupts metabolism causes a domino effect of damage: high blood pressure, cholesterol abnormalities and resistance to insulin, a prelude to diabetes in which cells are unresponsive to the hormone and cannot efficiently make energy from blood sugar. In addition to diabetes, obesity has been linked to cardiovascular, liver and neurodegenerative diseases and certain cancers." - Lit

This is quite interesting. Yet, we shouldn't forget that lifestyle has a large impact on metabolic health. ;) - Lit

"The frontpage news this week about the World Health Organization saying that cellphones could possibly cause brain cancer, which our friends at the Shots blog have been covering, has generated a lot of discussion about how it might be smart to use headphones and Bluetooth devices rather than putting your cellphone up to your ear. The idea is that doing so would keep any radiation away from your brain. It wasn't the first time researchers have issued a caution like that about cellphones, although as Shots points out the experts "have yet to find a clear link between cellphones and cancer."" - Lit

Rochelle: I personally don't like the idea of unneeded radiation, exposure to my head/brain (even if it isn't instantaneously cancer causing> NOTE: we should wait for more long-term research studies to complete life-long-continued-cell-phone-use effects to better understand cell phone use's biological impact). It's true that news headlines tend to exaggerate issues to spark attention. Yet, it never hurts to take possibly-preventative counter measures to protect your one head. :P - Lit

"It's a national health tragedy that is all but invisible, hidden behind the game face of workers who have been trained to take it in silence, part of the mettle-testing battleground of the bravado workplace. When we take the stress, though, we get taken--by any number of health problems, by the nonproductivity that comes from stress-addled brains, and by the staggering costs of a problem that we enable. More than three-quarters of the 956 million visits to physicians every year are estimated to be the result of stress-related problems. Want to dramatically cut health care costs? Start here. Three-quarters of visits to doctor's offices at, conservatively, $100 a pop = $71 billion. Job-related stress also costs American business $344 billion a year in everything from medical bills to recruiting and training, according to research at Middle Tennessee State. Chronic stress kills more people every year than traffic accidents, nicotine, or alcohol from the host of conditions it stokes, from heart disease to strokes, yet we hear next to nothing about it -- no anti-stress ad campaigns like the anti-smoking spots. In Britain, they take work stress seriously enough that the law requires that companies there undergo regular stress audits. Can you imagine that happening here? A massive stress education program could go a long way toward addressing the problem, because the vast majority of us know next to nothing about stress--and how we hold the key to creating it or dumping it. Yes, there are plenty of stressors coming at us in a warp factor 9 workplace, but it's not the deadline, what a customer says, or the conflict with a colleague that's causing your stress. The reality is you are. It's the story you tell yourself about the negative event or the stressor that's causing the stress. We all have the ability to change the stories that create our stress, if we know how the dynamic works. The problem is a design flaw in our brains that leaves us prone to false emergencies. We were designed for life-and-death struggles on African savannas, not overflowing in-boxes or sales quotas. That's especially true for the part of your brain that sets off the stress response, the amygdala, a hub of the emotional brain, the ancient limbic system, which ran operations before we evolved the higher brain organs that can make decisions based on reason and analysis, not raw emotion. In times of perceived danger the amygdala hijacks the 21st century brain and takes the helm again. This ancient alarm system is as good at measuring threats in the workplace as a yardstick is at calculating the distance to the sun. A hundred and fifty emails a day is a hassle, but it's not life-or-death. But if an overloaded inbox makes you feel you can't cope, off goes the signal that sets off the stress response, which floods your body with hormones that suppress your immune system to help you fight or run ... away from your computer? Researchers have discovered that there are a couple of keys to controlling the stress response (which can be shut off in three minutes, as soon as the brain can see the danger is over): increasing "latitude," such as the amount of control you have in your work -- possible through changes in how you do your tasks -- and the story you tell yourself about the problem. The first story you get when the stress response goes off is supplied by your caveman brain, the amygdala. Since it thinks those 150 emails will overload your coping ability, it interprets the matter as life-and-death, unleashing the stress response and the panicked thoughts that come with it. The initial thoughts of a panicked brain are exaggerated, catastrophic. We get swept away by a surge of emotion from these distortions, buy the false beliefs, and go down the irrational track, causing any number of consequences, all based on a fantasy. Stress constricts your brain to the perceived crisis and inhibits all the things that can reduce the stress, such as relaxation, recreation and play. Active recreational experiences are one of the best stress buffers available, something I detail in my new book on the power of engaged experiences, "Don't Miss Your Life." But stress shuts off diversions from stewing and ruminating, leaving us to obsess about the perceived emergency. The more we stay caught up in a cycle of stress and rumination, the more we miss our lives. We're never taught to contest the illusions of stress, so the hysterical stories stick. If we don't dispute these stories with the 21st century brain, the stress response spirals in intensity, locking in a false crisis mentality. Since the process suppresses the immune system, you become vulnerable to any number of health problems -- adrenal dysfunction, back pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, hypertension. The biochemical changes increase the bad cholesterol and decrease the good kind. The stress response steals from various body systems to pump more blood to your arms and legs to fight and run. It was intended to last for the minutes or perhaps hours it took to get out of harm's way, not to pump 24/7, day after day, month after month, as it does with modern chronic stress. You can exit the trap of work stress by increasing your control over the work environment as best you can and changing the false story of the caveman brain to one based on the facts of the situation as soon as you feel the wave of emotions and irrational thoughts go off. There are a number of effective techniques that can help reframe the story, as well as relaxation tools that can reduce the anxiety so you can build in your rebuttal to the irrational thoughts. Some processes, which involve deep breathing and reframing, are good for situational stress. They let you step back when the going gets tense and create counter-stories that can stop the stress spiral in its early stages, before the catastrophic thoughts get entrenched. The stress spiral is weakest at the very beginning of the cycle, so that's when you want to contest it. It takes time and effort to change reflex behaviors, but you can learn to reframe emotional panic with realistic appraisal of stressful situations. Stress is by no means easy to deal with, since we react to stressors before we think. It's an automatic response, which is why we are so under its thumb. But we can build in the thinking and catch ourselves before we rush headlong down the irrational track and wind up with a dump truck of angst -- for nothing. Real courage lies not in absorbing punishment but in managing reflex emotions and work tasks that set them off. As Lao Tzu put it, "He who is brave in daring will be killed. He who is brave in not daring will survive." Opting out of the stress reflex is the real home of the brave." - Lit

"Egyptian activists will hold an online protest on Wednesday to press the military leadership to investigate soldiers who abused pro-democracy demonstrators, including women who were detained and forced to take "virginity tests". The interim authority, formed after Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February, has come in for increasing criticism from the youth movement for the slow pace of its reforms, and intolerance of dissent. The abuse of the women, which was confirmed by a senior army official, has caused particular anger, and prompted a storm of protest on the internet. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces had previously denied claims by Amnesty International that 18 women detained in March were subjected to virginity checks and threatened with prostitution charges. But an Egyptian general told an American television network on Monday that tests were in fact conducted, and defended the practice. "The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general, who requested anonymity, told CNN. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found … molotov cocktails and [drugs]." He said the tests were conducted so that the women would not be able to claim that they had been sexually abused while in custody. "We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general said. "None of them were [virgins]." Amnesty condemned the general's comments and called for a full investigation. "This general's implication that only virgins can be victims of rape is a long-discredited sexist attitude and legal absurdity," a statement said. "When determining a case of rape, it is irrelevant whether or not the victim is a virgin. The army must immediately instruct security forces and soldiers that such 'tests' are banned." The women were detained on 9 March, nearly a month after the revolution that forced Mubarak from power, when soldiers cleared Tahrir Square after men in civilian clothes attacked protesters. One of the female victims, Salwa Hosseini, 20, told Amnesty that she and the other women were forced to remove their clothes before being strip-searched by a female guard. Male soldiers looked into the room, and took pictures, she said. The women were also beaten and given electric shocks, Amnesty reported. The growing dissatisfaction with the interim government is increasingly clear. While the military council has pledged to organise elections this year and hand over to a civilian government, tens of thousands of people appeared in Tahrir Square last week to demand faster reforms. Youth activists have said that additional, online protests are necessary because Egypt's mainstream media treads too softly around the military, a taboo carried over from Mubarak's reign. The new rulers have shown themselves to be thin-skinned, with a military prosecutor summoning a prominent blogger and a television journalist after they criticised the army during a talkshow. Three other journalists were also called in for questioning on Tuesday. They were all released without charge. In a statement, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information condemned the military council for "dispersing fear" among the media and the judiciary. The group said that three judges were also under investigation for appearing on talkshows where they criticised the use of military courts for civilian cases and called for judicial reform." - Lit

I wonder what the virginity tests for men look like. - Anika

Idiocy of actually having and using 'virginity tests' aside, I'm glad the article pointed out how ignorant it is to determine non-virgins can't be raped. - Anika

The whole thing bothers me. It further reminds me of certain societies' sex-different-treatments. :( - Lit

"Anger is the primary protective emotion, designed to protect us from harm or from loss of something of value. The most physical of all emotions, anger sends action signals to the muscles and organs of the body to prepare us for one purpose and one purpose only: to neutralize or defeat the perceived threat. Two factors go into the formulation of anger: current vulnerability and magnitude of the perceived threat. Relatively little threat will cause anger when vulnerability is elevated, for example when physical resources are low - you're tired, hungry, sick, injured, depressed, anxious, stressed - or when self-doubt is high, making you more easily insulted. Problem anger (that which leads you to act against your long-term best interests) is caused by high vulnerability. It is the most self-revealing of emotional states, pointing directly to a powerful cause of vulnerability: a sudden drop in core value. You experience a state of core value when you think and behave in accordance with the most important things to and about you. It includes a sense of authenticity (you feel genuine) and self-regard, which, together, lower self-doubt and vulnerability to threat. . For instance, if it is important to you to be fair in your dealings with others, you will regard yourself well as long as you are fair, and feel guilt and shame when you are not. If you use the guilt and shame as a motivation to be true to your core value, i.e., to behave more fairly, your self-regard will instantly improve; you will act with conviction and not need anger for defense. But if you blame your unfair behavior on someone else - a spouse or boss or the IRS - you will become angry or resentful and utterly powerless to restore genuine self-regard. That's right, while angry or resentful, it is nearly impossible for you to restore self-regard on your own, because now it requires that someone submit to what you want. The best you can hope for while angry or resentful is a temporary sense of self-righteousness. When out of touch with your deepest values, you are more likely to act on ego - how you expect other people to regard you. Once again, your self-regard will depend not on what you do, but on the regard of others (who are likely to be preoccupied with their own self-regard.) In short, you will be become more vulnerable. Because it is controlled by others, ego requires manipulating the impressions of others to preserve and lots of resentment and anger to defend. Preserving and defending your ego will usually lead to violating your deepest values. Problem anger comes in many forms, e. g, any resentment, restlessness, impatience, agitation, irritability, or sarcasm that motivates behavior contrary to your best interests. But the experience of these unpleasant emotions can be invaluable guides, if you use them like a gas gauge. They tell you that your current state of core value is too low and that you need to fill it up, that is, act according to your deepest values. If angry about the unfairness of someone else, you must be sure that you are being fair. Otherwise, you will merely react to a jerk like a jerk. In your core value, you will act with conviction to achieve fairness, which is likely to be in your long-term best interests. In anger you will devalue others - at least in your head - which is unlikely to be in your long-term best interests. Overcoming anger problems requires much more than managing the emotional feelings and physiological arousal of anger, as anger management classes strive to do. Eliminating anger problems depends on a choice of what kind of person you want to be - an angry, resentful person who struggles to manage negative feelings and arousal, or one who lives securely in your core value." - Lit

"As the world spins faster and faster—or maybe it just seems that way when an email can travel around the world in fractions of a second—we mortals need a variety of ways to cope with the resulting pressures. We need to maintain some semblance of balance and some sense that we are steering the ship of our life. Otherwise we feel overloaded, overreact to minor annoyances and feel like we can never catch up. As far as I'm concerned, one of the best ways is by seeking, and enjoying, solitude. That said, there is an important distinction to be established right off the bat. There is a world of difference between solitude and loneliness, though the two terms are often used interchangeably. From the outside, solitude and loneliness look a lot alike. Both are characterized by solitariness. But all resemblance ends at the surface. Loneliness is a negative state, marked by a sense of isolation. One feels that something is missing. It is possible to be with people and still feel lonely—perhaps the most bitter form of loneliness." - Lit

"Solitude is the state of being alone without being lonely. It is a positive and constructive state of engagement with oneself. Solitude is desirable, a state of being alone where you provide yourself wonderful and sufficient company. Solitude is a time that can be used for reflection, inner searching or growth or enjoyment of some kind. Deep reading requires solitude, so does experiencing the beauty of nature. Thinking and creativity usually do too. Solitude suggests peacefulness stemming from a state of inner richness. It is a means of enjoying the quiet and whatever it brings that is satisfying and from which we draw sustenance. It is something we cultivate. Solitude is refreshing; an opportunity to renew ourselves. In other words, it replenishes us. Loneliness is harsh, punishment, a deficiency state, a state of discontent marked by a sense of estrangement, an awareness of excess aloneness. Solitude is something you choose. Loneliness is imposed on you by others. We all need periods of solitude, although temperamentally we probably differ in the amount of solitude we need. Some solitude is essential; It gives us time to explore and know ourselves. It is the necessary counterpoint to intimacy, what allows us to have a self worthy of sharing. Solitude gives us a chance to regain perspective. It renews us for the challenges of life. It allows us to get (back) into the position of driving our own lives, rather than having them run by schedules and demands from without. Solitude restores body and mind. Lonelinesss depletes them." - Lit

"Ready to Retire? Here's a Five-Year Pre-Retirement Plan. [Wall Street Journal] "We have compiled a checklist of things to do and consider over a five-year timeline before this crucial date." http://online.wsj.com/article... How fear can ruin your retirement [MSN Money] "A new study indicates recent or soon-to-be retirees have serious money worries, but they can take steps to assuage those concerns and improve their financial situation." http://money.msn.com/retirem... Indexing Works [Financial Planning] "Many investors think active managers can shift out of stocks in time to stem losses in bear markets. Not true." http://www.financial-planning.com/fp_issu... Million Dollar Homes Across America 2011 [Yahoo Finance] "We checked in with cities across America to find out about their million-dollar dwellings." http://finance.yahoo.com/real-es... 4 Health Myths That Drain Your Wallet [US News] "Here are four health myths that could cause you to overspend." http://money.usnews.com/money... — FREE MONEY FINANCE" http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/ - Lit

Retirement age will likely be in the mid 70s soon! :-/ - Halil

Sadly enough - Lit

"The publisher of the Call of Duty video game series is attempting to cash in on its massive popularity by rolling out a new service later this year, tied to upcoming game Modern Warfare 3, that will ask players to respond to the call for a monthly fee. The long-rumored service, dubbed Call of Duty Elite, won't restrict non-payers from online competition, and instead will take the PlayStation Plus route of appearing to offer additional content rather than holding existing benefits hostage. The Wall Street Journal reports publisher Activision Blizzard will likely charge less than $8 a month for stuff such as downloadable map packs and statistical analysis. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick says the subscription fee is a necessity because the customer service infrastructure for the service requires an "enormous investment." Other publishers are no doubt salivating over the potential to charge monthly fees for popular console games, turning them into World of Warcraft-like cash machines. If you play Call of Duty, what does Elite need to offer to get you to enlist?" - Lit

"In a new online report, which will publish in an upcoming issue of the peer-reviewed journal Population and Environment, Curtis and her colleague Annemarie Schneider examine the impacts of rising oceans as one element of how a changing climate will affect humans. "We're linking economic and social vulnerability with environmental vulnerability to better understand which areas and their populations are most vulnerable," Curtis says. They used existing climate projections and maps to identify areas at risk of inundation from rising sea levels and storm surges, such as the one that breached New Orleans levees after Hurricane Katrina, then coupled those vulnerability assessments with projections for future populations." - Lit

"Judges have rejected an appeal by war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic seeking to stop his extradition to a U.N. tribunal, Serbia's chief war crimes prosecutor said Tuesday. The former Bosnian Serb commander will be extradited to The Hague, Netherlands "as soon as possible," Vladimir Vukcevik told The Associated Press." - Lit

"Mladic is charged at the tribunal for atrocities committed by his Serb troops during the Bosnia's 1992-95 war, including the notorious Srebrenica massacre that left 8,000 Muslim men and boys dead...His 23-year-old daughter Ana, a medical student, committed suicide in 1994 with her father's pistol. She reportedly never wrote a suicide note, but media reports at the time said she ended her life at Mladic's Belgrade family house because of depression caused by her father's role in the war. (Her grave pictured)" - Lit

"How you chow affects mood, memory, sleepiness—and even whether you can crack a good" - Lit

"In recent years, much sleep research has focused on memory, but now results of a new study by University of Massachusetts Amherst psychologist Rebecca Spencer and colleagues suggest another key effect of sleep is facilitating and enhancing complex cognitive skills such as decision-making...This role of sleep in everyday life is accepted as common wisdom, but it hasn't been well characterized by science until now, she adds. She and her colleagues believe this sleep benefit in making decisions may be due to changes in underlying emotional or cognitive processes. "Our guess is that this enhanced effect on decision-making is something that depends on rapid-eye-movement or REM sleep, which is the creative period of our sleep cycle," the psychologist notes. Results are in the current early online issue of the Journal of Sleep Research. " - Lit

"The different responses correlate with the various stages of development, Decety said, as the brain becomes better equipped to make reasoned judgments and integrate an understanding of the mental states of others with the outcome of their actions. Negative emotions alert people to the moral nature of a situation by bringing on discomfort that can precede moral judgment, and such an emotional response is stronger in young children, he explained." - Lit

"...The study revealed that the extent of activation in different areas of the brain as participants were exposed to the morally laden videos changed with age. For young children, the amygdala, which is associated the generation of emotional responses to a social situation, was much more activated than it was in adults. In contrast, adults' responses were highest in the dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex -- areas of the brain that allow people to reflect on the values linked to outcomes and actions...The responses showed a clear connection between moral judgments and the activation the team had observed in the brain. "Whereas young children had a tendency to consider all the perpetrator malicious, irrespective of intention and targets (people and objects), as participants aged, they perceived the perpetrator as clearly less mean when carrying out an accidental action, and even more so when the target was an object," Decety said." - Lit

I was reading this yesterday on http://medicalxpress.com/news... - Halil

cool :) - Lit

"Recent research has confirmed that in blind subjects who use echolocation to navigate, it is the visual part of the brain that processes the auditory echoes. Christie Nicholson reports" - Lit

"...And now scientists have learned that the area of the brain that processes the echoes is not the region for hearing—it’s actually the visual cortex. The research is in the journal Public Library of Science ONE. http://www.plosone.org/article..." - Lit

"Ocean acidification, a problem usually associated with global greenhouse gas emissions, is also caused by coastal pollution and other local sources that can be managed under existing laws, according to a research team led by the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford University. In a report published in the May 27 edition of the journal Science, a team of marine scientists and legal experts provided the first roadmap for local communities to combat ocean acidification by applying federal and state laws and policies – from the U.S. Clean Water Act to municipal zoning regulations. "Coastal communities don't need to wait for a global solution to fix a local problem that is compromising their marine environment," said co-author Meg Caldwell, executive director of the Center for Ocean Solutions and senior lecturer at the Stanford Law School and at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment." - Lit

"To address the problem in the United States, the researchers recommended that coastal communities first turn to the federal Clean Water Act, which directs state governments "to ensure that precipitation runoff and associated pollutants [which can increase acidification] are monitored, limited and consistent with the sustainable functioning of aquatic ecosystems." To comply with the act, seaside communities can reduce runoff by implementing stormwater surge prevention and coastal buffer zones, maintaining intact wetlands and improving water treatment, the authors said. "In many cases, federal funding is available to help local governments complete these kinds of projects," they wrote. The authors also recommended controlling coastal erosion – "a classic function of local and state governments and one that could markedly benefit coastal ecosystems by reducing nutrient and sediment loading of water," they wrote. "Such coastal inputs may be enriched with fertilizers and, if unchecked, can further increase acidification in estuaries and coastal waterways." Other recommendations included the adoption of local zoning policies that reduce runoff and carbon dioxide emissions, along with enforcement of existing federal emissions limits on pollutants such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide, which can contribute to local acidification." - Lit

"As Anne Harrington, Professor of Medical History at Harvard University, puts it: "There is an innate capacity for our bodies to bring into being, to the best of their ability, the optimistic scenarios in which we fervently believe". The results from the study of South Korean athletes have been replicated again and again, and across religious boundaries. The belief that a higher power is guiding one's performance seems to boost performance and remove doubt, something which can help sports people just as much as it helps patients. Even away from faith, there are examples where belief can appear to change outcomes in sport. England midfielder Paul Ince used to leave it until the last moment to put his shirt on. Goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer has worn the same shin pads since he was 16. Nani, the Manchester United winger, plays with his socks the wrong way round. Of course, these superstitions have little relevance to performance - unless you really believe they do. As Edwards, who lost his faith after retirement, put it: "Any belief can have powerful effects, so long as it is held with sufficient conviction"." - Lit

Whenever I see a footballer thank his god for letting him score I'm always reminded of Mark Twain's "The War Prayer." :) - Eivind

:) - Lit

"In 1948 hundreds of Arab villages in what is now Israel were abandoned as their residents fled the fighting. Only one, Lifta, remains empty, and former residents are fighting plans to transform the village into a luxury development and tourist destination. Wyre Davies reports from Lifta." - Lit

"Muammar Gaddafi continues to hold tightly to power even as NATO bombs rain down on Tripoli. Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad has killed more than 1,000 of his own people in an effort to quash protests." - Lit

"...In a new paper called "How Power Corrupts," a Columbia University team of psychologists suggest that power doesn't change the psychology of powerful people but, rather, their physiology. Lead author Dana Carney and her team hypothesize that because power eases so many daily stressors — dictators never have to worry about driving a car or paying a mortgage — powerful people show persistently lower levels of cortisol, a hormone closely associated with stress. Typically, immoral behavior — even routine sins like lying — is stressful. "A lie-teller must actively inhibit and suppress many things including: the truth, internal monitoring of [his or her] moral compass, social norms, fear of consequence, and consideration of others' interests," Carney and her colleagues write. "This suppression leads to negative emotions, decrements in mental function, and physiological stress." But because they have lower levels of cortisol, "the powerful have an abundance of emotional and cognitive resources available to use when navigating stressors as they arise." In this way, dictators may become immune to regret. When the Columbia team tested their hypothesis in a lab setting, they found that study participants who were placed in large offices and informed they were managers made difficult decisions much more easily than those given the role of subordinates. Not only did the high-power group score lower on psychological measures of stress; they also had lower levels of cortisol in saliva samples. Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011... " - Lit

"A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that certain personality traits contribute to being a good judge of whether someone else thinks you're worth meeting again." - Lit

"(CNN) -- It is now remembered as the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. In a five-day orgy of slaughter at Srebrenica in July 1995..." - Lit

"Mladic arrest hailed as 'important day for international justice...http://edition.cnn.com/2011...' " - Lit

Excellent timing on this arrest... - Eivind

I agree...it's about time! - Lit

"Even people who claim to love the high-pressured lifestyle will admit, in their quieter moments, that there are times when they just want to get away from it all, if only for a short time. Vacations have the potential to break into the stress cycle. We emerge from a successful vacation feeling ready to take on the world again. We gain perspective on our problems, get to relax with our families and friends, and get a break from our usual routines. That's if the vacation is "successful."..." - Lit

My standards are only high due to the bad experience, but I'd trust you! :-) - Halil

"Children who get insufficient sleep at night are more likely to become overweight, according to researchers in New Zealand." - Lit

"Let me boil our findings down to one quick tip. If you want a job — a good job, a job that will be around for a while and pays well — find a company that creates some new product or service that nobody else has." - Lit

"Countries tend to have personalities just like people do. Researchers have set out to define those differences, using a scale that measures how tight the social rules and standards are. They find that cultural rules — as simple as when and where it's appropriate to kiss — are often shaped by a nation's experience with war, disease and other challenges." - Lit

"What's Google Wallet? Google Wallet is a new service that allows you to pay for things with your smartphone like you currently do with credit cards. When you're at a store, you'll just be able to tap your phone to a receiver and "scan" a digital version of your credit card to pay for things. The idea is that once the service becomes more popular, you won't have to carry a wallet full of cards wherever you go. Sure you may still need to carry one as a backup, but you'll be able to make many of your purchases just by pulling out your phone." - Lit

"Google Wallet hasn't officially launched yet, but at launch time, it will work at a number of different merchants, like CVS, Subway, RadioShack, and more—many of them even offering loyalty coupons when you use Google Wallet. To see all the places you can use it, check out Google's interactive map. " - Lit

"...researchers may have come up with a model for nervous-system diseases and perhaps even regenerative therapies based on cell transplants..." - Lit

"This story is part of special National Geographic News series on global water issues. When antidepressant pills get flushed down the drain, they do more than create happier sewers. Scientists in Erie, Pennsylvania, have found that minute concentrations of fluoxetine, the active ingredient in Prozac, are killing off microbial populations in the Great Lakes. Traces of antidepressants such as Prozac have been found in both drinking and recreational water supplies throughout the world, in quantities experts say are too dilute to affect humans but which have been found to damage the reproductive systems of mollusks and may even affect the brains of animals like fish." - Lit

It's not the best drug, as it does make some people more aggressive, and it's also too widely prescribed by some GP's, as they still have little understanding about mental health issues and the drugs. - Halil

"A NASA spacecraft has been approved to launch in 2016 to visit a near-Earth asteroid, mission managers announced today. Dubbed OSIRIS-REx—for Origins Spectral-Interpretation Resource-Identification Security Regolith Explorer—the robotic craft will conduct the first U.S. mission to collect pieces of an asteroid and bring them back to Earth. OSIRIS-REx was selected out of three projects under consideration for funding by NASA's New Frontiers Program, which aims to develop uncrewed spacecraft missions designed to help us understand our solar system." - Lit